Denis Cotter on leaving Paradiso after 32 years and the protégé taking his place

This summer Denis Cotter is handing over the reins at Cafe Paradiso to Dave O’Mahony, a man who began his career at the iconic restaurant as a teenager washing dishes.

Dave O’Mahony and Denis Cotter of Paradiso on Lancaster Quay, Cork. Picture: David Creedon

The average life span of a restaurant is just three years, about as long as it takes to determine whether a fledgling hospitality business has a viable financial future. Many fail long before the three-year mark. In October this year, Paradiso, one of the world’s most renowned vegetarian restaurants, celebrates its 32nd birthday, its longevity but one testament to the Cork restaurant’s unique qualities.

Paradiso joins a rarified club in passing the three-decade mark but all good things come to an end. Restaurant work is amongst the most demanding of all professions and there is a finite life to a career in the kitchen. 

Even if, as chef/proprietor Denis Cotter and so many of his peers elsewhere have done, you step out from behind the stove and into an executive head chef role, there comes a day when it's time to hang up your toque. This summer, Cotter turns 66 and feels his time in Paradiso is drawing to a close.

Occasionally, a transfer to a new ownership regime, such as Ross Lewis passing the Chapter One baton to Mickael Viljanen, can work out well. However, though we cherish the food of beloved restaurants, hospitality is as much about people and relationships and, in most cases, when the founding owner/operator of a successful restaurant finally leaves the stage, they invariably take with them that indefinable magic that made their business so beloved and the restaurant shuts up shop for good.

Denis Cotter and his then-partner, Bridget Healy, opened Paradiso in 1993. Picture: David Creedon

Another option is to pass it on to the next generation of the family but neither of Cotter’s two sons followed him into the business. Instead, Cotter looked to another ‘family’ member, Dave O’Mahony, of the Paradiso ‘clan’. O’Mahony grew up doors away from Cotter’s young family, best friends with Cotter’s sons since he was six, often with the boys as they ran in and out of the newly opened restaurant, and at the age of 15, O’Mahony started his first job — dishwasher in the Paradiso kitchen.

Denis Cotter and his then-partner, Bridget Healy, opened Paradiso in 1993 and it was a smash from the very beginning. First of all, this was no hippie outpost but a fine-dining restaurant that just happened to be vegetarian. In addition, it eschewed the usual approach of simply ‘replacing the meat’ and serving ‘meat alternative and two veg’. 

Furthermore, Cotter banned the usual ‘wholefood vegetarian’ suspects of the time, pulses, rice, meat substitutes etc, and instead chose to bore down deep into the potential of the vegetables themselves, which traditionally had always received second billing on restaurant plates, even in vegetarian restaurants.

But it was the beginning, in 2001, of a collaboration with growers with Ultan Walsh and Lucy Stewart of Gort na Nain Farm, in Nohoval, Co Cork, that turned Paradiso into a globally unique restaurant.

Dave O'Mahony and Denis Cotter of Paradiso. Picture: David Creedon

Cotter and Walsh sat down each year at the start of the growing season and plotted out the year ahead as to what would be planted and how this hyper-local, chemical-free, seasonal veg of sublime quality, often featuring produce or varieties never before grown in Ireland, would fit into Paradiso’s seasonally changing menus.

This was pioneering stuff: it was eight years after Paradiso opened that renowned Parisian chef Alain Passard gambled by converting his three-Michelin-starred restaurant, L’Arpège, over to an entirely vegetarian menu with a primary focus on vegetables.

In 2019, Cotter’s and Walsh’s symbiotic and globally groundbreaking partnership was honoured with the Collaboration of the Year prize at the inaugural and highly prestigious World Food Awards. These days, with the kitchen now led by head chef, Miguel Frutos, guided by Cotter as Executive Head Chef, the Paradiso offering is as vibrant and contemporary as it has ever been.

“I started hanging around with Tom [Cotter],” says O’Mahony, “when I was about 5 or 6, even earlier, which was about the time the restaurant opened. They lived in No 4, we were in No 10, the two families probably the only kids on the street. From around seven, eight, myself and Tom were just spending every waking moment together. Sleepovers, going to the beach. When we were 11 or 12, we were drafted in to iron napkins for the restaurant.

Dave O'Mahony: "After my Junior Cert, I asked for a job and became a dishwasher." Picture: David Creedon

“In summer 2000, after my Junior Cert, I asked for a job and became a dishwasher. I was put on the second evening shift, starting at around 9pm, and I strolled in during service and the girls on the floor were like, ‘where are you going, little fella?’ They knew me as a friend of the family but they were wondering where I was going at that time of night.

“I started giving it hell for leather and worked my absolute ass off at the dishwasher. We finished really late and I was asking, ‘was that alright, is this the time we usually finish?’ The head dishwasher said, ‘yeah, it’s about an hour and a half after we’d normally finish.’ It’s like, ‘fuck, I have to get better at this!’ I would come out thinking I’d done a class job but everyone was going, like, Jesus Christ, the floor is soaking, he’s soaking!

“I always wanted to work my absolute bollocks off here. Impress the [fellow staff members]. I thought they were the coolest people ever, all about five or six years older than me, very cool, handsome, beautiful, super cool people.”

“Every year,” says Cotter, “the entire Paradiso crew would go away for a weekend somewhere, rent a house or go out on a boat. All the staff’s kids would come as well and Dave was there as Tom’s buddy. So, before he was working there he was part of the fabric of Paradiso.”

Denis Cotter on Dave O'Mahony: "Before he was working there he was part of the fabric of Paradiso." Picture: David Creedon

With the restaurant menu also available for staff dinners, O’Mahony was soon intimately acquainted with the food offering. His wine knowledge also developed apace.

“My family were always very into food,” says O’Mahony, “although maybe more conventional mainstream dishes and wine is my dad’s passion, he has a very good palate, and in the early days, he would have helped tasting to put together the wine lists.”

By the age of 17, O’Mahony had badgered his way into a job working on the floor.

“I loved it, I loved chatting to people, I loved learning. I love to learn. It’s funny, but I’d never have a 17-year-old on the floor now.”

O’Mahony, however, was obviously a precocious 17-year-old and by the age of 21 was working as a floor manager before heading off to Australia with his now-wife, Brenda Long. In Australia, a country with a hugely progressive, innovative and vital hospitality scene, he worked in some very high-profile restaurants.

He also began formal wine studies in earnest. (He qualified at WSET level 4 a number of years ago, achieving the industry standard expert level and is now one of the best sommeliers in the country.)

Dave O’Mahony was working as a floor manager by 21 before heading off to Australia where he worked in some very high-profile restaurants. Picture: David Creedon

When he and Brenda returned to Ireland in 2013, he resumed his position as manager of the restaurant. About two years ago, Cotter began to consider him as a potential successor and new owner of the business. O’Mahony took all of a minute to agree but when he takes over later this year, it will mean stepping into a less familiar general manager role.

“It’s all about getting a sense of how the business is running or what you need to do or change, simply by looking at the numbers. It is tricky but interesting. Then you put the pieces together, what Denis calls the anecdotal information and the actual information; so the month felt really busy, but the numbers don’t say that, but that’s a bit weird. Or everyone’s saying we’re really quiet, but the numbers are good. That’s weird. Sometimes they match up. Yeah, sometimes they don’t. 

“But understanding both sides is crucial. It’s learning to read the restaurant’s progress through numbers which I never would have before, it’s a language I’m learning. I’ve always had huge respect for Denis as a real balls-to-the-wall chef, a real taskmaster and the continuous emphasis on quality, on the plate and on the floor, but now I’m seeing him as much as a mentor. ”

Dave O'Mahony: "I’ve always had huge respect for Denis as a real balls-to-the-wall chef, a real taskmaster." Picture: David Creedon

“About a year and a half ago,” says Cotter, “when I decided that it was time to move on to the next stage of my life, I began to look at Dave as a serious prospect to take over — it is amazing just how much he gets Paradiso and the ethos. Having Miguel in the kitchen was the other important part of the jigsaw for me. Miguel is a brilliant chef but, more than that, he gets Paradiso, he gets the ethos, this is not just another job for him — he is in it for the long haul.

“I will continue as Executive Head chef until Miguel feels ready to take over that role and when Dave is ready for the general manager role, then it will be time for me to move on to the next chapter in my life. I will be able to carve out more structured time for my writing [five best-selling cookbooks to date] and of course I’ll still be working in Maureen’s [the bar in Cork city’s Shandon area run by his wife, Maureen McLaughlin]. 

“Paradiso is a fucking brilliant place and it’s not vanity for me to say that but it takes a ferocious energy to maintain those standards and it is now time for me to direct that energy in other places. Paradiso wasn’t the first thing I did in life and it won’t be the last.”

Denis Cotter: "It will be time for me to move on to the next chapter in my life." Picture: David Creedon

And what of O’Mahony’s vision for the future of Paradiso when he takes over as the new owner?

“Day one, O’Mahony’s Steakhouse,” he chuckles, as Cotter raises his brow, a glimmer of a wry smile — when you’ve run a vegetarian restaurant for over three decades, you’ve heard all the carnivore jokes in existence.

“What has always been brilliant about Paradiso,” says Dave, “is how it continues to evolve and no doubt there will be change, changes that we make and also changes in direction for hospitality and in diners’ tastes and preferences. But wherever we end up, with Miguel leading on the food and my feedback and me guiding the business, we will never lose the Paradiso ethos. 

“To keep it going for another 30 years would be a huge achievement and, whatever it looks like in the future, it will always be Paradiso.”