Ryan O’Sullivan has quite a CV under his belt for a 31-year-old. Winner of season 22 of Gordon Ramsay’s US television show Hell’s Kitchen, he spent his early years in Gurranabraher in Cork before moving to Douglas as a teenager. However, in 2017 he made the decision to move to Palm Beach, Florida.
His parents were chefs so “food was always in the family” regardless of what house he walked into. One of his first experiences with food was going fishing with his dad when he was seven or eight years old and making garlic grilled trout: “From then on I was kind of hooked at the aspect of you can catch a fish, you can clean it, you can do something so simple to it.”
O’Sullivan went on to do culinary studies in Munster Technological University and after going on a J1 to San Francisco in the summer of his second year, he decided he wanted to go back to the United States to build a career as a chef. “For me, I was like, I have to get back to the States and make something of myself.”
The opportunity to make the move came knocking about two years later in the most unlikely way. After putting his CV up on Indeed, recruiter reached out to him and offered him an interview for a chef role in a country club in Florida. O’Sullivan admits that at first, he thought it was a scam.
However, he agreed to do a couple of interviews for various chef positions at county clubs in the US and a few weeks later he was on a plane to Florida. With the recruiter paying for his accommodation and flights, all O’Sullivan had to do was make the plane. He travelled over in October 2017, initially planning to be back in Cork the following May. Some seven years later he is still in Palm Beach living with his wife who he met in a bar over there.
O’Sullivan started his US career working in a country club making omelettes from 7am to 3pm. By chance, a regular customer offered him a job in a place called Martha’s Vineyard on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts after his season in Florida ended.
He took the job and travelled to Nantucket Island in May 2018. “I was working crazy hours over the summer. I learned so much about myself, about cooking, about people,” O’Sullivan recalls.
He describes Nantucket Island as a “melting pot of nationalities” and during peak summer season the population swells from 15,000 to 150,000 people.
In October 2020, he got a direct message from another recruiter asking if he would like to be part of the next season of Hell’s Kitchen. Three interviews later he had a plane ticket to Los Angeles to film season 22 at the height of Covid-19.
Despite the pandemic, life in Florida had been relatively normal as the city had shut down for just a week. Once he landed in Los Angeles, O’Sullivan experienced a bit of culture shock. Contestants were quarantined for two weeks before filming began, the “closest thing to prison”, he said.
The theme of that season of Hell’s Kitchen was the American dream and contestants were asked to bring their roots through in the dishes they served. However, some ingredients that can be easily found in the shops in Cork were hard to come by in Los Angeles. “I actually tried to get spiced beef because I wanted to do something from like the English Market, something pure Cork,” he says.
O’Sullivan believes serving dishes he grew up on, such as his vol-au-vent starter in the finale, clinched him the prize. “I feel like a lot of people got lost in the actual concept of what it’s about. You and your roots, who you are and what you represent.”
The winner of the competition bags a prize of $250,000 and gets to work as executive chef in Ceasars Palace, Las Vegas, for a year. However, O’Sullivan chose not to take up the role, with his family settled in Florida. It wouldn’t be the last O’Sullivan saw of Ramsey though, as he spent three weeks in one of the chef’s restaurants in London in September of this year.
O’Sullivan says living so far away from home does come with its sacrifices: “It’s just friends and family is what I miss the most.” Living on the other side of the ocean means inevitably missing out on occasions that bring the family together.
Along with still working full-time at the country club, the next things on O’Sullivan’s schedule are an event at the Fort Lauderdale Boat Show at the end of October and judging the World Food Competition in Indianapolis this November.
When it comes to advice that he would give to others who are thinking about moving abroad for work, O’Sullivan says you have to become comfortable with the uncomfortable. “It is like if you’re a small plant and a small plant pot, your roots can only grow so far. But if you put yourself in a bigger pot, your roots can go mad.”
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