Pat McLarnon brings the country to the city. In a laneway behind Brook's Hotel, McLarnon minds and maintains a small vegetable and herb patch. Just off Drury Street, Dublin 2. McLarnon has never forgotten his roots: his feet are deep in the soil.
He was born and grew up in Portglenone, playing amidst the wild garlic and the bluebells in the ancient forest on the banks of the River Bann, just north of Lough Neagh. He messed around with another great Northern chef, Noel McMeel, and the pair regarded each other as “cousins”, despite being unrelated: soul cousins, rather them just blood cousins. The town was a place where you knew who grew your spuds, and the butcher knew what cow he was selling. McLarnon understood the value of these things, even though, as he says, “there was no culture of appreciating what was there”. When what was there began to slip away – after things speeded up when the U.K. joined the EU – McLarnon was immediately conscious of what was being lost. In some ways, his work has been about getting back what was lost, and getting back to where he came from: he has always been going back home.
He is a proud chef, always wearing his toque, a fierce supporter of his kitchen crew from whom he summons their best. He worked in Ardtara House, and in Ernie's in Donnybrook, and the quiet class of Brooks Hotel suits his cooking, which is patient, elemental and understated, born out of a need to seize and express the purity of his ingredients. He can't be other than his best, and he wears his cooking on his heart. He's a gentleman, and he's still that kid, back in the forest with the wild garlic, and all those bluebells.