CONRAD Gallagher has always seemed like a young man in a hurry. When he was nine years old he lied about his age in order to swing a kitchen job at the Mount Errigle Hotel, in Letterkenny. A big fellow, he had no trouble convincing them that he was 14.
Less than two years ago, he arrived back in Ireland, 15 years after he first walked into a kitchen, and following a 13 month stint in Monte Carlo where he worked with Alain Ducasse the noted three star, French chef who has just succeeded Joel Robuchon in Paris's leading Restaurant Jamin.
Back home he immediately began cuting swathes in Morels, Alan O'Reilly's restaurant in Glasthule, Co Dublin. From there it was a speedy hop, after only four months, to his own premises when he. opened the first Peacock Alley in a basement in Baggot Street, last summer. His wild, outrageously involved cooking drew devotees, and detractors, by the dozen.
In the 11 months that it was open, getting a table in Baggot Street became one of the toughest tasks in town, so Mr Gallagher began the search for larger premises. How he achieved this gives a new definition to a young man in a hurry. On a Monday morning, I heard that the premises was up for grabs and called straight away," he says. "They said, would you like to view it tomorrow? I said I'd like to view it today, six o'clock. The next morning I came back with my accountant and for the first time we discussed price. They said when do you want to move? I said next Monday. So we had to do the deal.
"We met in the coffee shop next door at four in the afternoon, talked there until seven o'clock, then left and went to the pub next door. We talked on there until one in the morning, when we signed the heads of agreement. Next day, at 4 pm we signed the deal. I had the workmen in on the following Monday."
The property in question housed the former Cafe Caruso in South William Street. As the wheeling and dealing was going on and the renovation beginning, Mr Gallagher was still hopping back to Baggot Street to cook lunch and dinner. The speed of the developments also meant that he still had no approval from the landlord, which necessitated a drive down to Galway on the Sunday. Approval came through and the new Peacock Alley was ready to roll. All of a week had passed.
All Mr Gallagher needed now was the money to do what he wanted to do. "I reckoned we could get everything done for about £30,000," he says, "but in fact it took more than double that." Where does the money go Mr Gallagher has spent £4,000 on plates, for example, designed by Villeroy and Bosch. His glasses, imported from France by. Terroirs of Donnybrook, added another £2,500. Linen for the tables absorbed another £2,000. Open a restaurant and the whole world seems to suddenly hold out its hand to be paid, and the crisis for anyone wanting to open a new restaurant is the lack of any financial help from any quarter.
Mr Gallagher's bank, despite his stellar reputation and his packed restaurant, was. unwilling to wear anyone who still had such little experience and so, he says, "I found I was having to rob Peter to pay Paul. It was touch and, go all the time."
But there wasn't any time to be worrying about all this, as work was going on day and night to renovate Cafe Caruso .and turn it into the new Peacock Alley. It took all told only two and a half weeks, with all Mr Gallagher's family coming down from Donegal to help out.
Meantime, back in Baggot Street, Peacock Alley was still full for every sitting, lunch and dinner. The final day came there on Saturday and then the kitchen was moved, which took until 6 a...... The new Peacock Alley opened in South William Street on Tuesday, April 23rd, with 42 customers for lunch and 76 for dinner.
THE logistics of the move to a new restaurant meant that Peacock Alley had to more than double its staff. The move from 12 people up to 26 was seamless, however, because Mr Gallagher had so many young chefs clamouring to work in his kitchen. "I would never poach staff," he says "but I get a resume from someone every day of the week. So there were people who had approached me and I said just hang on let's see what happens."
The kitchen staff work in a smart kitchen that cost £40,000 to kit out, spent on tiling, plumbing, stainless steel surfaces and lighting, a sum which is being repaid "on the drip", says Gallagher.
His system now is to operate a series of "stations" in the kitchen, with cooks responsible for different functions, as opposed to the more conventional, hierarchical system with cooks arranged in order of seniority and responsibility. This system suits the menu, for Peacock Alley now offers only an a la carte menu and a degustation menu, and there is no set dinner.
Each plate travels from station to station as it is worked on and assembled, which plays to Mr Gallagher's style of intensely, confected food.
Upstairs, meantime, the decor was absorbing £40,000. The old bar was taken out and a new one installed. Tables were salvaged and resurfaced. A seating area was. created at the front with a trio of sofas and then the paint and the paintings had to be considered. He chose intense, dark blues and greens for the walls, which work well because of the huge skylight in the centre of the room. The abstract paintings are the work of two young Irish artists, Paul Jones and Brian Kennedy "My gran bought me one, and Derry Clarke (of L'Ecrivain Restaurant) helped out with a couple, and I'm trying to add one new one each week," he says.
The effect is both classical helped by a massive, copper, coffee machine and a sweeping statue and funky, with something of a snaky bistro beat to the layout of the slender, inter linked rooms.
"We have to get everything right," says Mr Gallagher. "The atmosphere, the service, the food."
It is a tribute to the improvement in standards of new restaurants in Dublin that there is such pressure on a restaurateur to get the whole equation spot on from the outset, but Conrad Gallagher seems to be positively thriving on the challenge. He is helped in his task by a devoted team, led from the front by Maura Carrie. I don't think I have ever been in a restaurant where the staff was so involved, so committed, as here.
And this commitment is vital, for Conrad Gallagher is so passionate about food, so passionate about cooking, that nothing is held back. "There are no boundaries to my food," he says. "Who is to say that I can't or shouldn't do the things I do, the things I want to do. So many people, so many cooks, are afraid to try new things but this is the new food. I hate boring food. I want to cook food that is interesting, I want food that has four or five flavours on the plate."
Boredom will not be a factor in the new Peacock Alley. In much the same way that Paul Rankin redefined what was possible with restaurant food when he opened Roscoff, in Belfast in 1989, Conrad Gallagher threatens to do the same in Dublin.
Each dish represents a torrent of ideas agenda welter of work. Each course is an exhilarating excursion through flavours, an intense reworking of our expectations of what cooking is about. Most chefs gravitate towards a fundamental simplicity in food but, in comparison, Conrad Gallagher simply on another planet.
The closest parallel I can think of to his, style is the great French chef Pierre Gagnaire, like Alain Ducasse, a three star luminary of the new food, a cook who delivers the same intensity, the same grand guignol of execution and ambition, the same series of shocks, as you find in Peacock Alley.
OTHERS might be happy to offer a pumpkin risotto as a starter, or maybe some roasted is of quail. In Peacock Alley you get both together. It shows just what this kitchen is trying toe achieve this is cooking which removes food from its singular dimension and plants it into an other context, just to see what can be done.
If the cooking is a marvel, so is the presentation. If you go with friends who have never been to Peacock Alley, each dish is greeted with "Oohs!" and "Coos!" and I can see a lot of instamatic snapping becoming a feature of the restaurant as the waiters place the plates on the table.
Desserts continue the theme, with even a simple bread and butter pudding tricked out with honey roasted fruit, arranged around and about and a scoop of cinnamon ice cream to sign, seal and deliver the concoction.
In Peacock Alley, the plate is the canvas, and the diner enjoys a performance we might easily describe as performance art. It is a thrill and what is especially enjoyable is the buzz and energy of the place, the fact that the little details the breads, the politeness, the care of the wine list receive as much attention as everything else. Only the music, and speakers which boom some what on the bass notes, are out of sync with an operation which is otherwise, after only two weeks, perfectly in tune.