‘Another lockdown is an absolute no go’: chefs and restaurants on surviving the pandemic

When he's not making TV shows and doing promotional work, Mark Moriarty is a chef at the Michelin two-star The Greenhouse, in Dublin. Except at the moment, he's not. "I have kind of lost my job," he says, referring to the closure of restaurants for indoor dining during the ongoing national lockdown.

The Greenhouse is accepting reservations from December 2nd, in the hope that restrictions will have eased, and like the rest of the team, Moriarty is looking forward to being back in the kitchen. “It’s a waiting game and it’s incredibly frustrating,” he says. He has mixed feelings about the possibility of December opening, followed by another closure order. “I know some businesses are going to need this trading time for survival, but another lockdown is an absolute no-go.”

For restaurants like The Greenhouse, it’s not just a matter of ordering stock and opening the doors. “Staff members have had to go back home to the UK, Italy and Uruguay, because they couldn’t afford to live here during lockdown. For us to reopen, we need to get these guys back and into quarantine.”

While he waits to hear if he will be back at work next month, Moriarty has been busy promoting Beyond The Menu Reset, a follow-on to the RTÉ TV series that aired just over a year ago, in which he visited young up-and-coming chefs and restaurateurs around the country to find out what got them into the business, and keeps them there.

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Filmed in August by Appetite Media, when restaurants were open, the two-part programme revisits chefs and in some cases their front-of-house partners, to see how they coped during the spring lockdown and learn about the adaptations they have had embrace to give their businesses a chance of survival. Not all are in the same jobs, and for some, there is more change to come.

In Donegal, Moriarty is reunited with his pal Ciaran Sweeney, who left Dublin to return to his home county. Working, when restrictions allow, in the Lemon Tree restaurant in Letterkenny, Sweeney has spent the past 12 month planning to open a restaurant with rooms in the Downings area, which he hopes to start work on in the new year.

In Dublin, Moriarty catches up with Grainne O’Keefe, head chef at Clanbrassil House and consultant chef at Bujo in Sandymount. Last year the pair flipped burgers at Bujo; little did either know that burgers, in a takeaway box to be cooked at home, would be a lifeline for the restaurant during the following 12 months.

Beyond the Menu is on RTÉ One at 7.30pm on Wednesday, November 18th and 25th