Where East meets eats in Midleton

CELEBRATING a 40-year anniversary in a business is a great reason to celebrate, but in the case of chef, restaurateur and bar owner, Finín O’Sullivan, he’s using the occasion as a chance to retire, and bow out gracefully, having seen the East Cork town of Midleton come of age during his tenure at the famed Main Street premises.

When he started, on May 1 in 1978, he says there wasn’t another food business in the town: now after decades of growth “there’s 58 restaurants and cafés...and six Turkish barbers”, and all are getting a cut of the cake, Mr O’Sullivan adds.

It’s not like it’s before time to consider retirement: after all, this is a West Cork island born man who started part-time work in the hospitality buiness at nine years of age, and was waged at the seasoned aged of 11, in a part-time job in the kitchen of the East End Hotel in coastal Schull.

“Oh, don’t print that at all about the age I started, people will think I never got an education,” says the still effervescent Long Island born son of a fisherman, who moved to the mainland after an island National School education, part of a family of seven, and who later went on to the renowned Catering College in Rockwell.

This was back in the early days of the Irish ‘gourmet’ experience, and on graduation as a chef the now 67-year-old continued adding to his East End hotel experience with the Misses O’Keefee, with work in places like Germany, the Metropole in Cork under legedary Douglas Vance, the Oyster Tavern, and the Grand Hotel in Crosshaven.

He also had three and a half years in the Pier Head in Blackrock village, Cork city, and when that lease was up he went premises hunting, far and wide.

He found No 75 Main Street Midleton, on the corner with Coach Horse Lane, a pub that had ceased trading a year beforehand.

Within a year, Finín’s food business had taken off, in this the era of the Ryan family’s Arbutus in Cork city and Séan Kinsella’s Mirabeau in Dublin, when people were beginning to take their grub seriously, and he went on to win various national awards and commendations (from hygiene to food quality) from the likes of Lucinda O’Sullivan, specialising in staples like steak and seafood which have stood the test of time: “Customers say the only thing that has changed on the menu over 40 years is the left-hand side, the prices!”

Coming for sale, very much as a going concern in a booming market town and with a substantial (undisclosed) turnover, Finín’s is a prominent, three-storey Main Street Midleton bar-restaurant of over 2,500 sq ft, seating 100, with first floor kitchen, and separate adjacent 225 sq ft two storey stores.

It’s guided at €550,000 by Michael O’Donovan, MD of Sherry FitzGerald O’Donovan and Claire O’Sullivan who heads up SFOD’s Midleton office, and who happens to be a daughter of the vendor.

They say it’s one of the most renowned gastropubs in Cork, and thus the chance to take over “a very successful business with a long-established clientele”. There’s also a steam of trained proteges, ranging from one woman who’s 38 years in the kitchen, to a former Finíns chef who’s now selling Rolls Royces in Beverley Hills, a move from East Cork, to the US West Coast.

“Finíns has become an institution in Midleton over the years, both from locals and from those travelling and visiting, from far afield,” enthuse the agents.

- DETAILS: Sherry FitzGerald O’Donovan 021-4621166