What did Justin Green learn from his mum, the great Merrie Green? “Seasonality, growing your own, humour and the love of nature”. Could anyone ever be better fitted out for the business of running a country house and being a first-class restaurateur, than to have imbibed those attributes? No way. His mum gave Mr Green all the skills he needs to run both Ballyvolane House, where he succeeded his parents in 2004, the house itself having first opened to guests twenty years before, and latterly in O'Brien Chop House, in nearby Lismore.
But Mr Green upholstered his skills with valuable spells abroad, in Soho House, in the Mandarin Oriental, Hong Kong, and he learnt well all along the way. His skills have made his twin enterprises daringly dynamic, Ballyvolane a paragon of what an Irish country house experience should be, the Chop House a definition of what a restaurant catering for its public should look, feel and operate like. It is this ability to capture the essence of the thing – the restaurantness of a restaurant; the out-of-time glamour of a country house – that is his signature style. We feel, in many ways, that he is only starting. Lucky for him, he can see the humour in it all.