FUTURE PROOF:'EATING OUT is one of the first things people stopped doing," says Derry Clarke, whose Michelin-starred restaurant l'Ecrivain was probably one of the first businesses to feel the chill of recession.

“Corporate [bookings] would have gone off like a light switch. It was just like someone hit a switch and turned them off. Bang. It was just completely and utterly gone, I mean nothing.”

While Clarke had noticed a drop in temperature in September 2007, Christmas bookings made in boomier times cushioned the blow. The new year, however, brought a new vista.

The shining Michelin star that once drew diners with corporate expense accounts to the door like a magnet was now repelling them. Just as companies cracked down on reception desk flowers and corporate travel, fine dining receipts were also no longer palatable.

“What happened for us is that it was perception,” says Clarke. “Having a Michelin star, businesses didn’t want to be seen coming to us. They’d choose a more middle of the road restaurant to entertain.

“If I could have done a menu for a fiver, it wouldn’t have made a difference to corporate customers. It wasn’t the price, it was going into l’Ecrivain. The other restaurants at our level would have had the same problem, I think.”

He says the restaurant, like the rest of the country, rode an almost freak wave between 2001 and 2006.

“It went completely haywire, it was madness. I think we all closed our eyes, our ears and our heads . . . surreal is actually the word to use.”

But usually having their own budgets and systems in place, he says often it wasn’t corporate customers who spent the most but individuals.

“It was impulse spending, no questions asked – impulsive, compulsive, repulsive, I don’t know what you’d call it. There was lots of waste. You’d see people buying a good bottle of wine and leaving most of it.”

Despite a drop in business between 2006 and 2009 of about 35 per cent, sitting down with his wife Sallyanne and his team, he says the decision was made to “keep quality, keep the Michelin star and keep our standards”. That meant sacrifices.

“How do you keep quality at a budget? It was very difficult . . . we didn’t make anybody redundant. We took the biggest cut, myself and Sallyanne. We did have investments here and there, money put aside and we used that as back up to keep things going, and still do. We’ve put a lot of directors loans into the business over the past four years to keep it afloat because it is a viable business.”

“To be honest, I only thought the recession would last a year or two. I didn’t realise it would go on so long. If it hadn’t gone on so long, we might have changed our plan,” he admits.

He says gas and electricity costs have continued to go up while the cost of ingredients hasn’t fallen.

“It’s kind of incredible to say this but food prices have not gone down in the recession . . . so for example, beef prices, they’ve actually doubled in the last two years.”

He says while labour costs haven’t come down as much as he’d like – “they’re still too high a percentage of our turnover” – diners expect and deserve top service and having long serving staff who know the business is a plus.

“I think they all understand where we are at. Sallyanne and I are very honest with them, we don’t hide anything. We all work this business together.”

A recession buster €25 lunch offer launched with this newspaper and his contemporaries Richard Corrigan and Ross Lewis in 2008 proved Dublin’s big name chefs weren’t above flexing with the times.

Describing it as the beginning of the “fight back”, Clarke says, “We just had to take what was happening and move with it and that deal was very successful.”

Other menus for the cost conscious diner have followed. “We’ve done different things, slow braised food, not inferior just cheaper cuts, slower cooked for special menus and that has worked quite well.”

He said he won’t budge on fillet steak, however. “If you want a fillet steak, you’ve got to pay for it. That’s fair.” But those opting for a €25 lunch menu can go off piste for just an extra fiver if they have a hankering for steak.

“I think that’s quite fair and good value actually. It has worked out quite well. You can stick to the set menu but still have steak.”

Clarke has also diversified, launching a new food range, Derry Clarke Kitchen, in partnership with his longstanding meat supplier Michael Bermingham.

“Over the years, I’ve been asked to endorse different food products and turned them down. If I was going to do it, I wanted to have control of it and stick my name on it, because if it’s my own, I can stand over it.”

Products include “a lovely black pudding made with apricot and barley soaked in Guinness. Hereford beef burgers, dry cured rashers and garlic and chive sausages. We use really good natural ingredients and make things from scratch.”

With listings in Londis and BWG Foods, he says business is gathering pace.

Things are picking up at l’Ecrivain too. “In the past three or four months, things are turning, corporate is coming back, slowly but surely,” he says.

“There is definitely renewed energy around the country, you can feel it and I think we will have a good future.”

He says he’s noticed more tourists compared to previous years too. “Last Saturday night, over 50 per cent of our guests were tourists and they are all saying the same thing, that Ireland now has great value.”

While he says things will never bounce back to the heady pre-recession days, he prefers it that way.

“I was actually happy at the turn of the millennium between 1999 and 2000. The pricing levels were right but then it just went off kilter.

“Myself and Sallyanne, we were lucky. We never lost sight of what we were doing. We did put stuff away in pensions but we lost that unfortunately – but we’re not going to give the poor mouth. We’re lucky. We’re still in business. I know how lucky we are.”