Cliff House’s Michelin-star chef to leave restaurant

Martijn Kajuiter, executive chef at Michelin-starred House restaurant at the Cliff House Hotel in Ardmore, Co Waterford, is leaving the kitchen to take up a new role within the Cliff Group.

The chef will move to “a newly created commercial and business development position”, according to a statement released on the hotel’s Facebook page. A recruitment process to hire his replacement as executive chef at House is underway, said Simon Bath, chief operating officer for the Cliff Group.

The Cliff Group also includes the Cliff Townhouse in Dublin and Cliff at Lyons in Co Kildare. Cliff at Lyons is the location for Aimsir, which recently made its debut in the Michelin Guide as a two-star restaurant.

According to Bath, the Facebook post was part of the recruitment process. “We wanted to get it out there because we are keen to find somebody as quickly as possible to allow Martijn to get on with his new role,” he said.

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The social media post goes into Kajuiter’s career with the hotel in detail. “On reflection it is quite a lengthy piece, maybe it was a bit too long ... but we wanted to get those points across,” Bath said.

The chef, who is Dutch, has been working at the Cliff House since it opened in 2008. The restaurant was first awarded a Michelin star in January 2010. It has retained the star since then, and is included in the current 2020 edition of the guide.

According to a spokesman for Michelin, the restaurant will retain its one-star status: “Star ratings remain unaffected even if a restaurant’s head chef decides to leave halfway through the year.”