Circuit Civil Court:MasterChef Ireland judge Dylan McGrath told a Circuit Civil Court judge yesterday he had no intention of turning his €1.4 million new restaurant on Dublin's Fade Street into a public house. Although he is fighting for a full seven-day public house licence for the restaurant, Fade Street Social, he told Judge Matthew Deery the venture would fail if he just tried to run it as a pub.
Mr McGrath told his counsel, Constance Cassidy, that while he had a number of bars built into Fade Street Social, they would be used as places where customers could sit on stools to have their food and drinks as well as formally at tables.
He told the court, where his full public house licence application is being challenged by neighbouring competitors, that he had designed his restaurants, on two floors of a former bacon curing factory, as something unique.
John Reynolds, owner of the Market Bar on Fade Street, is part of a quartet of local pubs and restaurants who are objecting to the granting of a full licence to Mr McGrath.
The hearing continues today.