No plan to turn restaurant into public house, says celeb chef

Masterchef judge Dylan McGrath told a judge he had no intention of turning his €new €1.4m restaurant in Dublin’s Fade St into a “public house”.

Although he is fighting for a full seven-day public house licence for the new restaurant, Fade Street Social, he told Judge Matthew Deery at the Circuit Civil Court the restaurant would fail if he just tried to run it as a pub.

Mr McGrath yesterday told his counsel, Constance Cassidy, that while he had a number of “bars” built into Fade Street Social, they would be used as bars where customers could sit on stools to have their food and drinks as well as formally at tables.

He told the court, where his full public house license application is being challenged by neighbouring competitors, that he had designed his restaurants, on two floors of the former bacon curing factory, as something unique. Mr McGrath, who owns other restaurants, said he wanted to take advantage of his name and reputation. He would employ about 60 people, including 25 chefs.

Mr McGrath said that while he had included a room with a bar, it would be used as a holding area where customers who had reserved tables could sit on sofas and chairs or stand at the bar and have drinks while they waited for their tables to be prepared. He said a restaurant without a holding area for customers to wait while tables were rotated would not work, as he had proved in an earlier restaurant of his that had gone bankrupt.

He agreed with Eamon Galligan, counsel for a group of four objectors, that the holding room was a place that “a few friends returning from a match could stand and have a few pints”, while awaiting their order.

Mr McGrath told Mr Galligan he hoped to have a “soft opening” with family and friends this Saturday and to have a full opening within weeks. He agreed he already had a “wine on premises” license.

Planning consultant Eamon Kelly said that, to the ordinary person, the layout could seem to be more like a pub than a restaurant. He said there had been a number of changes to the plans t initially laid before the court.

The hearing continues today.