Robbie Gleeson speaks to SANDRA O'CONNELL
PRIOR TO this job my wife and I had our own restaurant, Gleeson’s, in Clonakilty, where we live. She ran the front of house and I ran the kitchen and we did it for six years.
We won restaurant of the year in 2007 but then the downturn hit and we closed one-and-a-half years ago. I think we ran it too much from our hearts and, in the end, we decided to call it a day.
My background is in five-star hotels, so I’m delighted to be at the Westbury. I have a team of 27 chefs to work with and there’s a great atmosphere. That said, I have very high standards and if something’s not right, I’ll say it.
It’s a strange period for me insofar as my wife and two children are still in Clonakilty. They’ll be moving up to Dublin at the end of this school year, after 11 years there.
It’s strange living in a hotel room, in that you don’t have home comforts but I’ll go home on the train on a Sunday and fly back on a Monday morning on the 5am flight. When I’m home I cook for the family. During the week I’ll eat in the staff restaurant.
At work my days vary quite a bit but the past few weeks have been among the busiest of my life. I think in the last 10 days I’ve only been out of the hotel twice. One was a 10-minute walk up Grafton Street and the other was to have a snowball fight with Gino de Campo and Heston Blumenthal outside the hotel. That was priceless.
On a normal day I’ll be in the kitchen any time from 7am onwards to check on breakfast and then to go through orders and deliveries. We’ll agree menus and then start the banqueting preparations then too. You have to be organised in a hotel like this. Everybody has to be very clear about what needs doing.
This is a really busy period for us and we get a lot of functions at this time of year. I pride myself on doing everything right, which often means preparing 10 menu tastings for a wedding, say.
I’m passionate about food quality and consistent standards and I’m very hands on. In my own restaurant there were just two in the kitchen catering to up to 80 covers a night, with everything from the bread to the ice cream handmade.
If I have a food philosophy it would be simplicity, freshness and, crucially, consistency. Unfortunately, for myself, I’m so busy that I rarely get to each lunch and last night dinner was a sandwich in my room at 9pm – fillet steak in ciabatta, and some kettle chips.
Robbie Gleeson is executive chef at the Westbury Hotel in Dublin