Chef Mark Moriarty: 'Women are always right'

This Much I Know: "I think the lesson I’d like to pass on is that no matter what you decide you want to do it’s going to take hard work to do it."

Sat, 20 Feb, 2021 - 08:00

Martha Brennan

I don’t think anyone is ever born into a line of work. I think everyone is kind of a product of their environment and what they grow up in. Cooking was always something I was interested in and I thought if I could work in something that I had an interest in it was going to be easier and more rewarding.

We have a small inshore fishing boat down in Kerry where my dad is from and I used to be mad into fishing lobster and crab in the summer. The kind of natural progression was to learn how to cook the stuff. Without knowing it at the time you get an education into what’s quality and what’s not.

You see kids nowadays and all they know is food from the supermarket in the glass containers with no awareness of the step before that in terms of the production and the work that goes into producing food. I was fortunate in that sense, it was something that I just liked doing but it has given me an unknown education into quality and ingredients.

Food quality is actually the most important thing and it’s not taught. There’s such a focus on going and working in kitchens and learning techniques and that’s obviously the bedrock of what we do but the last realisation for most chefs is that it’s very much just down to the quality of ingredients and not doing too much to them. The more you can focus on the understanding of food, the easier the cooking will be at the end of the day.

Good food costs money and we don’t all have money to spend, but it could be just a couple of choices a week.

Maybe go to the fishmonger once a week and spend a little extra on good fish or the same with the butcher.

I started my first kitchen job at age 15 on my summer holidays in a restaurant in Dingle. I had no clue and no training. I just very much wanted to be a chef and they let me come in and work in the kitchen for the summer.

Finishing that summer was probably the greatest challenge I've ever faced. It was only two months but it was a pretty tough place to go into as a 15-year-old. It was absolutely the best thing I’ve ever done. I was realising at 15 what the reality of being a chef was so I was able to make a decision on whether or not to do it long term and I got through it and enjoyed it in the end and stuck with it. I think there's a lesson in that for everyone.

What we see a lot in the restaurant with young people coming in is that it may or may not be for you and that’s fine, but you can’t decide after a week. You have to stick with it and after three or six months maybe decide if it’s not for you.

The amount of stuff you end up doing that you hate for the first few days but by week three you get comfortable in and then you start enjoying.

I think a lot of younger people now just give up on stuff and end up chopping and changing too much, and will end up missing out on a lot of opportunities as a result.

There's too much these days of people just assuming success will happen and coming out of college wanting to be the CEO of the company straight away. I think the lesson I’d like to pass on is that no matter what you decide you want to do it’s going to take hard work to do it.

I won Irish Young Chef of the Year in 2013 after coming second in 2012. I was struggling a lot that year with lots of different things. I decided to do it again and learn from the first year. I started getting more fresh air and just changed lots of different things in life to get more balanced and I learned a lot.

I was 20 when I came second and what annoyed me was the youngest ever winner was Neven Maguire at 21 and I wanted to win it at 20 but now I have to split it with him.

The person I turn to is my partner or my mother. Women are always right. The greatest advice I was ever given was to work to give yourself options. It makes everything a little bit easier because it takes away the fear of being trapped in one thing. It’s working smarter not harder.

In an ideal world a different fork in the road would have taken me to be a professional golfer on the PGA tour or a footballer with Leeds United. If I wasn’t to be a chef I would probably end up being a journalist. I have two new shows out in the summer so I’ll probably stick with what I’m doing now though.