This much I know: Denis Cotter, Café Paradiso owner

I’m a rationalist with frequent bouts of spirituality.

I don’t know exactly when I became a vegetarian. It was a combination of the influence of an ex-girlfriend and it being very fashionable in the early 80’s, with Morrissey and the whole left wing thing. It fitted my ethics and morality.

I had a lovely childhood growing up in Macroom but I wasn’t into cooking at all.

Career Guidance wasn’t even invented when I left school. You either went to college or got a government or bank job. I spent eight years working in the bank, until I got fed up.

I became very interested in food and restaurants when I was travelling around the country working in the internal audit department and eating out a lot. There is a mythology that Ireland didn’t have good restaurants 20 or 30 years ago, but it’s simply not true.

Food became something I thought about constantly and there came a point when I said this will be my career.

Giving up a good job in the 80s — during a recession — wasn’t the done thing. My father thought I’d get a shock when I found out that catering is such hard work. But I stuck with it. I went to London and got a job in Cranks restaurant where I started waiting tables and working in the kitchens.

When I was asked to get involved in Feed The City my first reaction was to say no — until I listened properly. The idea, to heighten awareness of food waste and sustainability issues, impressed me, as did the symbolic gesture of giving away food for free — we’ll be feeding 5,000 people vegetarian curry on Grand Parade on Saturday March 15.

I like to run a smooth and efficient kitchen. I prefer the way women run kitchens. The most important trait is the ability to do a number of things simultaneously to a very high standard, many, many times.

My biggest challenge in the last few years has been to give my personal life the time it needs, while still keeping Café Paradiso open during a difficult recession. I am astute — both my parents were shop keepers — but I can ignore that astuteness when I want to.

The best advice I got, and which I didn’t pay attention to until after the crash, was to make sure you make money in the business. I ran a business as a hobby. I was passionate about it but it took the crash to focus my mind and to see that it wouldn’t survive unless it was a better business. The way it was put to me was if you get 12 slices out of a lemon tart the last one is your profit. It took me more than 15 years to understand this.

I spent years focusing on work and recently wanted a different life/work balance. Now, I’m the Executive Chef at Café Paradiso and I work on the menus and individual dishes in collaboration with our Head Chef Glory Mongin, as well as writing the cook books.

I definitely believe in fate. A year ago I married a Canadian woman I met eight years ago by chance. After meeting Maureen, I believed in the relationship very strongly and, although it was a long process to gradually work towards the point where we live together in the same house and in the same country — I was committed to it and luckily she was too. I appear to be hard working but secretly I think I’m actually quite lazy. I don’t take advice very well. I am stubborn and, first off, I’m more likely to take umbrage than to listen.

I’m definitely a night owl. It helps in this business.

So far, life has taught me not to let things bother me. When I encounter a problem I tend to think about it really hard, do as much as I can about it — and then stop worrying about it.

* Denis Cotter owns Café Paradiso in Cork and you can hear more from him today at Feed the City in Cork which will see more then 5,000 people enjoying free vegetarian curry on Grand Parade starting at 1pm to heighten awareness of food waste and sustainability issues.