Between them, they’re a mini-melting pot all of their own. Nicole Server, from the Philippines, and Bartek Pawlukojc, from Poland, fell for each other in Denmark. They later moved to Kilkenny, where they set up Arán Bakery and Bistro.
“We can’t go anywhere,” jokes Server. “We have a house here now, and two businesses. We’re stuck here.”
Pawlukojc first came to Ireland during “the great Polish wave – the Polish flood, I call it”, of 2004/2005. His sister was living here and he joined her on and off over six years, in Dublin’s Palmerstown, in Greystones, Co Wicklow and then in Kilkenny, where his sister settled. Kitchen work started accidentally, as a summer job, while he went back and forth studying graphic design in Poland.
“I fell in love with kitchen [work], so I ended up finishing in gastronomy and hotel management,” he says. But Kilkenny was “small for a young chef”, the culinary tasks he was given not very challenging. “I was not very happy and fulfilled,” Pawlukojc recalls. “So I moved to Denmark.”
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The couple met as interns at Copenhagen’s celebrated three-Michelin-star restaurant Noma a decade ago. Server studied cheffing in Manila and did her internship in Europe, moving to Italy at age 18 for two years. Then, while working in a French fine-dining restaurant back home, she was accepted as an intern in Noma: “I dropped everything and relocated to Denmark.”
“On her first day, I just stood next to her and we started talking,” says Pawlukojc. “We moved in with each other after seven days. We got engaged after eight months. It was pretty fast and intense, falling in love and doing the internship at the same time. But we never stopped, to be honest.”
Server says: “He was a Chatty Cathy. He could talk for Ireland. He wouldn’t shut up.” English is her first language and he’s fluent.
They married in 2016 and wondered whether to stay in Denmark or relocate. They honeymooned in Ireland “to see if I liked it”, says Server. “Because I was very comfortable in Denmark. I was really not keen on leaving. We went around Ireland. I met his sister’s family. I fell in love with it.”
Visiting Food on the Edge in Galway, its food village and food producers, was a big decider.
“What also sold Ireland to Nicole, I think, is the quality of the produce. The cheese, the oysters, the meat.”
There they met Galway cheesemonger Seamus Sheridan, now a good friend, who later helped them setting up Arán. “Without Seamus, we wouldn’t have a business, probably, and Julie and Rod [Calder-Potts] from Highbank organic orchard here locally. They were supportive from the very beginning.”
They both became citizens three months ago but Server’s initial transition from Danish to Irish residency was complicated. “It’s supposed to take seven to 14 days, but it took 12 months.” They wanted to set up their own place and, while they waited for her residency card, he worked as head chef in Kilkenny’s Matt the Millers pub, where she joined him.
Sheridan helped them find premises, at 8 Barrack Street. They’ve since leased number 14 across the road too, for the bistro. They had no investors. “This is literally a project of blood, sweat and tears for me and Bart,” says Server. Pawlukojc is more blunt: “We lied to the banks.”
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They’d put a deposit on the property but were refused a business loan – “It’s a bureaucratic nightmare.” So, on pub wages, they took out two big personal loans – simultaneously, from different banks, without telling either one about the other. “Plus savings, family, friends, my sister.”
Those two bank loans are long paid off, so they can joke about it now.
Things were so tight that they opened a week early because they’d “only €200 to our name – we didn’t have money for rent the day we opened”. Luckily a line of 300 customers showed up for Arán Bakery’s opening on June 23rd, 2019. “We were lucky and we are very grateful. But we risked it all. It was all or nothing.”
We came with nothing, we had to work for everything from scratch
Server says adapting to Ireland was easier than Denmark. “It’s very similar to where I’m from. Irish people are very warm. They’re like Filipinos. We have the same kind of family values, the same religion. We don’t drink as much,” she laughs. (Pawlukojc: “The Polish drink more.”)
When he first came in 2004, Ireland was difficult, says Pawlukojc. “I was very young, inexperienced.” He found accents hard. “Poland was, believe it or not, poor back then. You felt like zero. We were the zero kind of immigrants. We came with nothing, we had to work for everything from scratch. Very, very hard. Much more difficult than moving to Denmark later, when you had money and you knew already a bit about the world.”
Back then, “Irish people were not used to foreigners in general yet”, he recalls. “There was some comments, looking down on Polish people. The same happened in Denmark. By now, 99.9 per cent of society has changed.”
Twenty years on, “being Polish is not a disadvantage, it’s kind of valued; Polish workers. I think society is changing. Now we’re all mixed. People are used to everybody else from my side of Europe. I haven’t heard or seen bad behaviour for years.”
Finding a home to rent was always hard; they’ve since bought a house 15 minutes drive away from Arán. Pawlukojc points to “this crazy loop” for people moving here, where to open an Irish bank account you need a bill with your address but you can’t have a bill if you don’t have an Irish bank account.
“And then you’re stuck. When you’re moving to a country and you’re living in a room with somebody, you can’t have those things.”
People assume Polish people are physical labourers and Filipinos hospital workers and caregivers, they say, and are sometimes surprised they own a business.
“The values in the Philippines, Ireland and Poland are very, very similar,” says Pawlukojc. “How you spend the holidays, and family gatherings – they’re a bit different, and traditions are not the same. It was a culture shock, I can’t lie. But it wasn’t that difficult.” He says he’s not “a turbo Catholic” but a tradition of Catholicism in all three countries “creates a bond, like a universal set of rules”, and similar values.
Server says “Irish people are very warm, very different from Scandinavians. In Denmark if you say hi to a stranger they’re gonna look at you like, are you gonna rob me?” Here, walking down the street “people say hi, how are you. You’re not really expected to stop and make conversation but you’re expected to say hi back”.
Setting up the business as foreigners in a new country was hard. “We went to the local enterprise board when we first wanted to open and they weren’t really helpful,” says Server. “So we did it without them. Now we’re kind of established, they’re more accommodating. There were so many rules you don’t know about. You don’t even know who to ask for help. One person says one thing, another person says another thing. Then the council comes and says, oh, sorry, you actually have to do it this way.” Making it work has been “our biggest challenge and yet our biggest success at the same time”.
Their business has expanded. The bistro and deli serves all-day brunch of local produce, including their award-winning sourdough, and occasionally dinner. They’ve won several Blas na hÉireann awards (including this month, and were supreme champions for their spelt bread in 2022), and during Savour Kilkenny over the October bank holiday, Michelin chef Ian Doyle is in residence at Arán.
When, less than a year after opening, Covid hit, it “kind of made the place across the road happen”, says Pawlukojc, because they got latitude on their loans. “Everything from the beginning was high risk. AIB basically saved us from bankruptcy in Covid.”
Arán’s newest venture is plant-based, Korean-inspired Magic Sauce, launched as part of Supervalu’s food academy. They’re “at the crawling stages” with it, talking to the local enterprise board about expanding production.
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
