Chef still has the appetite for Michelin-star meals

Celebrity chef Dylan McGrath has revealed he still has the appetite to whip up Michelin star-winning meals.

McGrath was awarded the ultimate culinary prize within a year of opening the Mint restaurant.

Its closure in 2009 came around the same time as the death of his mother, Mary, from cancer.

The chef has gone into more casual dining with the Rustic Stone, but he said on Saturday Night With Miriam he still has a passion for haute cuisine. “There will come a time when I will go back to it. I don’t want to lose my sanity doing it,” he said. “It is a very rewarding space when you are being so creative, you’re provoking emotion, nearly, through food.

“You are striving towards perfection. I miss that. The sick side of me would like to go back a little bit,” he joked.

McGrath also revealed he would love to settle down with a family. “Of course I would like to settle down. I would like everything life has to offer, I would like children and wife just like anyone else. I am not done as a professional. I am really enjoying the work.”

McGrath was always very close to his mother and her death in 2010 from brain cancer made him reassess his life.

“We were kind of shocked. There was six weeks between her having a brain tumour and her actually passing away. It was kind of a case of ‘life is very short’,” he said.

“What is the value of life and what is success? These are all the sorts of questions you ask yourself. I was insanely driven. I was relentless. I was very intense. It was the passion.

“We had just closed Mint and that was tough. She had cancer and we were trying to talk her into doing chemotherapy, which was a tall order. She was having none of it. She just decided she didn’t want that.”

He said his mother’s illness meant he couldn’t leave the country to work on the international stage so he had to concentrate on finding a way of working in recession-hit Ireland.

He said his mother had always inspired him to reach for the stars as a child growing up in Belfast. “She always wanted us to get on and be better. Looking back now I realise how much confidence she put into us as kids.