Saturday with chef Eric Matthews: Success is if someone stays working with you

Michelin-starred chef Eric Matthews pictured at BANG Restaurant for the announcement of his new partnership with Lidl Ireland as their official Chef Ambassador. Picture: Photocall Ireland.

05.45

I don’t sleep a lot so I normally wake up around 5.30am. I’ll have a coffee and read the papers on my phone.

07.45

I’ll leave the house around 7.45am, pop into Lidl in Stoneybatter to pick up some breakfast for the team, and arrive at Kicky’s at around 8.45am. I love the energy in Stoneybatter — Marcus O’Laoire (chef and content creator) lives there, Roberto Mungo from Grano is my neighbour… it’s just a great community.

Service at Kicky’s runs with six people. We’ll go through everyone’s mise en place for the day with my head chef or sous chef and do a running order for the day. We open all day long on Saturdays, and do around 160 covers, so it’s important to understand when time pressure will be on, when we can take breaks, when we can do staff food, who’s coming in, etc.

13.00

Everyone starts at 9am if they’re working lunch or at 12pm if they’re working till close, and everyone does a four-day week. This policy gives everyone a lease of life and improves staff retention — success is if someone stays with you and you bring them on. You’re not going to cook with love if you’re physically and mentally exhausted.

We open at 1pm and, if I’m at work, I will generally run the pass. I think of Magnus Nilsson, of Fäviken in Sweden, who says that the most experienced cooks should do the more difficult cooking.

15.00

By 3pm, we’ll start putting people on breaks and the extra chef in the kitchen will start looking at the family meal for staff. Sometimes we might just grab a pizza at Bambino. Saturday is my favourite day of the week — everyone is in good form, it’s busy, everyone is gearing up for their day off. The structure of my week means I split it between Kicky’s and BANG. It depends on the week, on the team, on whether we’ve a lot of weddings or group parties... there could be days when I’m at meetings till 3pm.

17.00

By 5pm, things are ramping up again and we probably still have another 100 customers to come; 5.30pm to 7.30pm is extremely busy and then we’ll have a little bit of a lull and then, from 8pm, we crack on again until about 10pm. Because we’ve had an extra person in all day, our orders will be done nice and early, so then it’s just about doing a good clean-down of the kitchen and having a well-earned beer.

19.00

I’ve spent 21 years in restaurants, so if I’m off on a Saturday, my priority is time spent with my wife. We might go out for dinner, to the theatre, or to the Lighthouse Cinema. My wife, Ciara Donnelly, works for Brown Thomas/Arnotts but she’s also a great singer (she was once a finalist on The Voice of Ireland), so we love going to gigs.

If we’re going for dinner, we love Dax for a special occasion. I really loved what Adam Nevin was doing in Carton House and am excited about his takeover of Glovers Alley. Hawksmoor is great, especially at lunchtime or on a Monday. I love M&L for when you want to get together with a bunch of friends, talk, and just be greedy; and I love Library Street — the team is brilliant and it is pure hospitality. I also really like Fish Shop; I love their wine programme and their food is great.

Kings of Leon recently dined in Kicky’s and I was gutted to miss them. Theirs is my kind of music. I recently went to see Kasabian and CMAT and will be at All Together Now doing some foodie talks. My wife is a divil for country music and I love jazz; I love going to The Sugar Club as well as to a great club in San Francisco, where my brother lives.

I got to go to Ronnie Scott’s recently for the first time; one of the owners dines in Kicky’s and hosted us really well. London is such a great spot for food, entertainment, and music — even 24 hours there is food for the soul. I lived there for a few years when I worked at two-starred The Square with chef Phil Howard — formative years which cemented my ethos.

23.30

It’s rare enough that I’m home before 11.30pm but, if I was off and at home, I’d probably be watching some chef documentary on Netflix and chatting to my wife. If I’ve been at home for the evening, I’ll probably be falling asleep on the couch by 10pm but, if I’ve been working, it’ll take me a while to wind down — I’ll still be thinking about how things have gone in work even when the shift is over.

• Lidl Ireland has officially announced a new partnership with renowned Michelin-starred Irish chef Eric Matthews as its official chef ambassador. Famed for his exceptional work at some of the country’s most exciting restaurants, Matthews is teaming up with Lidl to showcase how shoppers can achieve premium, restaurant-quality food at home for less.