Saturday with Lewis Barker: I opened my restaurant at 27 and had a Michelin star in six months

Lewis Barker. Terre. Castlemartyr Resort.

07.30

I get up and start my day with a cup of Yorkshire Gold tea for energy and a reminder of home in Leeds.

I will stop by the golf club here at Castlemartyr Resort and treat myself to a bacon and egg sandwich on a Saturday.

09.00

Lunch service starts at 12pm and there are a few hours of preparation before it. We receive deliveries, do a briefing about what’s on the menu for the day, how many guests, dietary requirements, any research and development that we need to discuss, and so on.

I work very closely with our head gardener Kevin O’Shea, who is heavily involved with the experience here. During the summer, we have a unique garden tour with guests and, during the winter months, he takes guests from the salon into the kitchen, explaining our preservations wall and our microgreens and how we grow and preserve the produce from the estate.

11.30

We finish up preparation at around 11.30am and do another quick team briefing with kitchen and service. We work closely with suppliers such as Ballycotton Seafood, Rossmore Farm Oysters, Skeaghanore West Cork Farm, and Velvet Cloud, as well as our own produce from the estate.

I bring my international experience to the table at Terre having worked in Singapore and Australia at some of the world’s top restaurants. I opened my own restaurant, Sommer, in Singapore at age 27 and within six months I had earned a Michelin star.

I try to use that experience to inspire my young team at Castlemartyr Resort. I keep myself involved here from morning to night. It’s a culture I carry with me — I like to lead from the front.

We have around 15 staff between kitchen and service. At 32, my head chef James and I are the oldest in the kitchen, we have people from around 21 to 28 years old — so it’s a relatively young kitchen. Experience is fresh, which keeps us busy in terms of directing knowledge, standards, discipline, and the correct way of working at this level.

15.00

Our lunch service finishes at around 3pm. We’ll clean down and start prepping for the evening service.

We have a staff meal at 5pm and our second briefing of the day.

18.30

Service begins at 6.30pm. Guests come in through the salon, which has wonderful grandeur and a traditional manor house feel. They have canapés presented by a chef and a choice of champagne from the champagne trolley while the fire roars in the hearth. It gives them a first understanding of what we do here and there’s a great sense of excitement straight away.

Then guests have a preservation tour of the kitchen — that’s a different vibe, a modern experience. We play a lot of rock music in the kitchen. Guests have a canapé at the chef’s table and then they have another at the ingredients table where a chef talks them through the various ingredients being used that evening. We operate at a high level but we are not stiff — we make people feel welcome and invite conversations around food. People are more and more interested in sustainability and provenance, and rightly so.

There is a different musical style throughout the experience. In the salon, it’s jazz, funk, soul; in the kitchen, you might hear the Arctic Monkeys, Arcade Fire, The Clash, or Fleetwood Mac. In the dining room, there’s a calm, peaceful atmosphere.

22.00

Guests move into the salon again for tea and coffee, petit fours, or a digestif. That’s my opportunity to make sure everything was enjoyable for them and to have a chat on a personal level too — why they’re here, what they’re up to during their stay. It’s nice for people to feel that they can have that kind of chat with the chef.

23.00

Back in the kitchen, we do a deep clean as we are closed on Sunday and Monday. We try to relax as a team to celebrate the week and wind down. We try to make it down to the Hunted Hog on the estate for a Guinness.

My wife and 10-month-old son are still in Singapore. Becoming a father has given me the drive to keep pushing. I have someone looking up to me now and want to ensure a good future for him and my wife. I’m looking forward to them joining me in Ireland this summer.

00.30

I’ll sleep well after a busy day… but maybe I shouldn’t say that — I don’t think my wife is getting much sleep at the moment with a 10-month-old!

• Lewis Barker is executive chef at Terre, an intimate, contemporary two-Michelin-star restaurant in the 18th-century Manor House of Castlemartyr Resort. See terre.ie.