Neven Maguire has plenty on his plate. The celebrity chef recently put the finishing touches to his 200th television show and is busy as a brand ambassador for supermarket and lifestyle chain Dunnes Stores. He continues to run the highly successful MacNean House and Restaurant in Blacklion, Co Cavan, as well as a cookery school there, where he still conducts all of the classes in person. And if that weren’t enough pans to juggle, this week he publishes his 20th cookery book, Eating Out at Home.
If he is under stress, there is no sign of it. There is no phone checking. No executive interruptions.
“Why would I rush? I’m enjoying this,” he says. “You have to be organised. That’s one thing, and the fact I love it, is the other thing. I love food, I love my job, and I love the many different elements to it, but I’m not afraid to delegate, which is important. Like in MacNean’s, I have a great head chef, Carmel McGirr; I have another lady, Claire, who helps me in the cookery school and she is fantastic too, and then I have Andrea Doherty, my PA.
“I think it’s so important not just to delegate but to trust your team. I suppose that’s something I’ve learned a lot over the years. And to be in business, you’re not going to hold on to staff if you don’t look after them and treat them like family. I feel that has really worked for us. Like closing for a week in June. It breaks up the year for your team. So everyone’s slow, everyone’s off.”
We give the menu options, ideas, seasonality – which is being lost within food sometimes a bit. I think that’s really important
There are some things, however, you just can’t delegate. Maguire’s typical day starts pretty high energy – at 6am – when he works out to the beats of some of his favourite 12-inch dance records, vinyl he collected in Dublin, Luxembourg and Berlin when he was a young chef in the 1990s.
Back then, home entertaining in Ireland was beginning to entertain “notions”. As the Celtic Tiger strained for take-off, books such as Wining and Dining at Home In Ireland by Sandy O’Byrne and Jacinta Delahaye were teaching a generation how to be urban sophisticates, impressing guests with restaurant-quality dinners made from exotic ingredients sourced in fine food emporiums, with wines to match.
Entertaining at home is a different beast these days. If there are aspirations sewn into the pages of Maguire’s latest book, they are about more casual dining and sharing, and less about structured menus – spending time with your friends and family rather than just impressing them with your prowess in the kitchen. While many restaurant chefs publish their recipes as coffee-table amuse-gueles for idle moments, to be wondered at rather than used, Maguire’s books are intended to be improved by the marks of greasy thumbs.
“This book is about the modern, more relaxed way of entertaining,” says Maguire, thumbing excitedly through the corrected proof he is seeing for the first time. “It is small plates, bigger plates, handy platters, it’s about grazing and socialising.”
[ Neven Maguire’s Cavan take on a Dublin coddleOpens in new window ]
The 100 recipes are all illustrated and the pictures carefully styled to stimulate the saliva glands, says Maguire: “You want them to look beautiful. You want people to eat with their eyes, and to say, ‘I want to re-create that. That looks amazing.’ And you also want them to be kind of simplistic: give them tips, what they can make ahead, especially when you’re entertaining for family and friends. You know you don’t want to be stuck in the kitchen all night and you want to be organised. So we give the menu options, ideas, seasonality – which is being lost within food sometimes a bit. I think that’s really important.”
The 100 were whittled down, says Maguire, from roughly 130 recipes, many of which are borrowed and adapted. All were rigorously tested, some needing less work than others, for example the brown butter Madeleines, 40 of which are produced daily at MacNean’s for breakfast.
Some of the recipes are as simple as chips, but in this version, the chips are soaked for two hours to wash out starch, then cooked once at 140 degrees for six minutes and then again at 180 for a further three. While the book is in no way “cheffy”, it is this chef-like exactitude and simplicity that renders it practical.
There is a Mediterranean influence at play throughout; caponata with burrata, Spanakopita (spinach and feta pastry parcels), risotto, chargrilled aubergine, Moroccan orange salad with pomegranate, pasta dishes, couscous, affogato.
“That would be from Portugal, Italy and Spain,” he says. “The way they eat and the way they graze. Probably the best country I have been on my travels, with regard to food, is Italy. I love the way they protect what they have. They only eat tomatoes in season and it’s very regional. You know, in Florence, you’ll get a lot of meat, and down in Sorrento lots of fish. Up the north, it’ll be pasta, home-made tortellini. I can see why it’s the most-cooked cuisine. Whereas in Spain, it’s very ingredients driven; Serrano ham, you know, the pinchos, the tapas. I just love the way they eat too. They value the black pork, the Iberico pork – which is my favourite – and fish. I find the food pretty impressive and inspirational.”
Homeliness shines through as the other dominant flavour in the book – fish pie, beef lasagne, spatchcock chicken – no accidents, but the fruits of research. Maguire quotes a statistic that 70 per cent of us are dining out less as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. “I have never cooked at home as much since Covid,” he says. “And I love cooking for the family, because they enjoy food and eating things in a way I didn’t when I was their age. It’s incredible the way we become educated about food. But the food I like to cook is simple. It’s not like ‘restaurant food that I cook at home’. It’s simple, everyday cooking from scratch. I might make a wee stir fry for them. The twins, Connor and Lucia, started school last week, and they love their steaks. They like fish. So there’s a good mix there, good variety, which is the key.”
If statistics indicating leaner attitudes among restaurant diners should induce anxiety in someone who relies on a successful restaurant as the fulcrum of his business, there is no sign of it in Maguire. This could be down to his naturally optimistic demeanour, but also the fact that the only chance you’ll get to eat at MacNean’s any time soon is if you can get a cancellation. The restaurant has a team of three dedicated to managing the bookings, which are currently running two years in advance.
“I know the industry is challenging at the moment,” says Maguire. “We know that when we see the number of closures happening, but it’s an exciting time too for innovation and creativity. I always thought we had the produce, the great beef and the dairy and so on. I am a big admirer of what people like JP McMahon have done for this country to make it a food destination, and I think that has happened.”
Maguire says he is using his current television series, Neven’s Coastal Food Trails, which visits restaurants, cafes, food trucks and producers around Ireland to promote young chefs and innovators doing interesting and flavoursome things.
“We’re going to be going to the North of Ireland too, which is fantastic,” he says. “It’s an all-Ireland kind of approach to food, which is the only way to go, I think. There’s a lot of innovation there. There’s a lot of creativity, and I think there’s a lot of excitement too. I know business is challenging, it’s tough, but I definitely see when it comes to ingredients and modern cooking, it has never been better. You even look at our coffee culture, or people going out for breakfast or lunch, like when I started off, I wouldn’t have known what brunch was.”
For a successful businessman with seemingly boundless natural enthusiasm, Maguire appears refreshingly unambitious in the ‘what’s next’ department. “I just want to keep it all going,” he says. “I could be doing cookery demos 24-7 if I wanted. My dream is to do a television show in Thailand. I’d love it because I love the culture. I love the food. I find it exciting and vibrant. Whenever I go there, I do a Thai cooking class. I’m in no way a Thai chef, but I like to introduce a little of the influence in some of my dishes.”
And with a two-year wait for dinner at MacNean’s, you might wonder if he is interested in opening a second restaurant. He isn’t.
“The only Michelin I want,” he says, “are the tyres on my car.”
Eating Out At Home is published by Gill Books, €24.99
