Kevin Dundon: 'We're paying our bills, but there's no money left over'

I am talking food nostalgia with chef Kevin Dundon. He’s riffed on other sweet stalwarts of the 70s — trifle, Angel Delight and Jaffa Cakes, the last being the inspo for the Jaffa Cake Kiss, his dessert version of the orangey, chocolatey treat, which features regularly on the menu at Dunbrody Country House, the boutique hotel on Co Wexford’s picturesque Hook Peninsula that he owns and runs with his wife Catherine.

“It triggers people’s memories of food and brings them back to their childhood,” Dundon says of his elevated take on the iconic mini cake.

He’ll be whipping up another nostalgic classic, the pavlova, and demoing how to cook the perfect steak — “always a huge crowd-pleaser” — as part of his turn on the Savour Stage at Savour Kilkenny over the October bank holiday weekend.

Dundon is a firm fan of the Marble City’s food festival, now in its 16th year.

“I’ve been doing it from the first year. It’s stayed very true to form. All the food traders and stalls are proper artisan producers serving great Irish products. It’s great to come down and support them. I use as much local produce as possible at my demos.

“With these festivals, you’re there and you’re going, ‘Oh my God, I didn’t realise we had this amazing bakery two towns over’. That’s what food festivals do, they highlight the community. And if you buy something in your community, it all goes back into your community. It’s just fantastic, in terms of generating revenue for your area.”

Dundon’s decades-long culinary career — he graduated from catering college in 1986 — has a global pedigree. 

Cheffing has taken him from Switzerland to Caribbean cruise liners and Canadian luxury resorts back to Ireland where he worked as executive head chef at the Shelbourne, before buying Dunbrody in 1996 and opening its refurbished doors the following year. 

Equally, Irish people’s food knowledge has been expanded by our globetrotting, he feels.

“We’re all travelling so much more, so our palates have been educated around the world. We’re coming back and putting it up to the chefs to create more interesting dishes. The palate is accepting a lot more, so you can introduce different flavours; it’s not just meat, two veg, and potatoes.”

That doesn’t mean he’s dissing our meat, veg and potatoes, quite the opposite. He’s a cheerleader for Irish produce and of the opinion that, while we always knew it was “unbelievably good”, we “now know what to do with it”.

“I’ve travelled the world, and our ingredients stand out a mile. You don’t have to do an awful lot to our ingredients to make them into spectacular dishes.”

He’s noticed our bolder palates and increasingly diverse society positively impacting the Irish restaurant landscape, too.

“What is interesting, if you walk around Cork or Wexford, or Dublin, or any city, there’s a Japanese restaurant, there’s a Korean restaurant, there’s a Mexican restaurant. Every cuisine that you can think of is happening in Ireland.

“Korean food is really taking off; Korean barbecue food is huge. It’s delicious and it’s hip — it’s a trend at the moment.”

WALKING THE WALK

These days, trends change at lightning speed thanks to social media’s insatiable appetite for content. 

Dundon — who has a healthy following on Instagram and TikTok — does an easy-breezy cook-along style live from Dunbrody at two o’clock, five days a week, mixing up trend-led deliciousness (crispy air fryer pork belly bits) with classic favourites (caramelised plum cake) and budget-friendly dishes (savoury minced beef with baby potatoes).

On his lives, and as we chat, Dundon’s voice fizzes with enthusiasm. 

He’s generous with his knowledge, peppering our conversation with top tips, and is evangelical about Irish ingredients and sustainability. 

He doesn’t just talk the ‘local, Irish, sustainable’ talk, though, the 300 acres at Dunbrody, with its beehives, ancient trees, vegetable, fruit and herb gardens, are testament to him walking the walk.

“The cost of having the garden and the staff and whatever is probably the same as if you were buying [produce] in, but the quality’s much better.

"We have the best vegetables coming into our kitchen, the freshest you’ll ever get. They’re coming out of the garden in the morning, they’re on your plate tonight, so the flavour is just unreal.

“And the carbon footprint is much smaller. We’re very conscious here about sustainability.”

Dundon is a multihyphenate — restaurateur, hotelier, cookbook author, TV chef, brand ambassador — partly because he’s got the brain of a creative and partly because it’s a necessity. 

Keeping a rural hospitality enterprise afloat these days is no mean feat, and while he has his finger in many pies, so to speak, he doesn’t lend his name lightly.

A decade ago, he had a cookware range on QVC in the US and was approached to put his name to an air fryer but, unimpressed with the poor results it delivered then, he declined. 

“They’re an amazing piece of kit now,” he says. “You’re eating proper food, using an air fryer. You can cook a roast chicken in 40 minutes, with roast potatoes and veg; everything’s going in there. If you’ve a busy lifestyle, they’re fantastic.”

He baulks at my left-field suggestion of cooking the festive dinner in one, but concedes “you can certainly do a ham in there”.

There might not be an air fryer out there with his name on it, but Dunbrody’s cookery school has an air fryer course and an online option, too. In difficult times, he’s making it work.

“Dunbrody would be treading water. We’re paying all our bills and we’re paying all our staff and we’re busy, but there’s no money left over after we pay everybody. We’re one of the fortunate business that we didn’t warehouse any bill, any tax. Which was an important initiative from the Government in lockdown, but that [money] is now [due].”

THE HEART AND SOUL

In February, a Fáilte Ireland report found that the outstanding warehoused-debt balance in the accommodation and food services sector was over €265m. That debt became due in May.

“It’s hard enough to pay your Vat and your tax currently… when you add warehoused [debt] on top, it’s just not viable, it’s not there,” he explains.

Dundon, when pressed, says he’s in favour of the government reducing the Vat rate to 9%, as it would be something it can “instantly do to help an industry that’s on its knees”.

Last autumn, the Government reinstated the pre-pandemic 13.5% Vat rate for the hospitality sector. Along with multi-pronged labour-cost increases, with more on the horizon, rising energy prices and food costs, the outlook appears grim.

“The hospitality industry is a really important industry in Ireland, or in any country. Because we’re the heart and soul of every small town in Ireland, every big urban site. It’s where we, as a population, meet and chat and socialise and communicate. 

And it’s a huge Irish welcome for tourists coming through. So if restaurants and cafes are closing, it’s not great as a whole.” 

He also cites the impact of the ‘Tuesday to Thursday in the office’ hybrid-working trend on urban cafes and restaurants; their business is now four days, when their business model was based on six.

“They’re paying rates, rent, mortgage, whatever the case may be, and staff costs for six days.

“I’m not complaining,” he adds. “I’m just saying it’s tough. Every year, there’s something that’s thrown in your face. You’re going, how are we going to get over this or get around this issue? But that’s business. And it’s not just hospitality, it’s across the board.”

Despite almost 600 restaurant closures in recent months — the Restaurant Association of Ireland recorded 577 between September 2023 and July 2024 — he’s optimistic for the industry’s future.

“There is a young crop of chefs and hoteliers and restaurateurs coming through that are exciting. That excites me as a chef.

“I think our food offering in Ireland has never been stronger. I just hope that stays and keeps growing, and we can find some sort of balance in costs versus business, because you have to make money, otherwise there’s no point. It’s as simple as. It’s a business at the end of the day.”

One which, whether it’s a Blue Book manor house, a stall selling sourdough, or a humble ice cream, is woven into the very fabric of our memory making, saved to savour again and again.

• Kevin Dundon will appear on the Savour Stage at 12pm on Sunday, October 27. Savour Kilkenny Food Festival, 25-28 October, see savourkilkenny.com

KEVIN ON...

Your biggest influence?

Dario Othorello, a Spanish chef I worked with in Canada. He gave me flavour; how to get flavour in food. I'm ever indebted to him.

Favourite Irish ingredient?

Potatoes. That sounds corny, doesn't it? But down here, when you’ve got the new potatoes and you steam them and the skin cracks and you put a blob of butter on top… it’s like you’ve died and gone to heaven.

Favourite five-minute meal?

Probably a toasted cheese and ham sandwich. With the right ham and the right cheese. If you're hungry, you can have that on your plate within five minutes. With a lovely mustard in there too, and a salad on the side. And if you have tomato soup in the fridge, boom!

Favourite comfort food?

A really good shepherd's pie. Lamb, loads of vegetables in there, Worcestershire sauce, a good creamy mashed potato, knobs of butter on top, and into the oven to heat up.

Most overrated ingredient?

Nutmeg. Can't stand it.