\u201cWe had signed the lease in 2007… quite an expensive lease, which was a regular lease at the time,\u201d the chef tells Katie Byrne on the latest episode of the Money Talks podcast.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was about \u20ac125,000 a year rent for the space. We signed that with personal guarantees \u2013 we were a bit naive going in, we kind of said, \u2018ah yeah, sure we\u2019ll just sign whatever we need to sign\u2019. And then the crash happened and it was… yeah, it was difficult.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a new restaurant; it was a relatively new concept in terms of small plates and tapas were not really on the regular radar of everyone in 2008. It took two years, really, for the restaurant to take off as a kind of national institution.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite the overwhelming gloom of the financial crash, McMahon recalls people just getting on with it and having a good time.<\/p>\n
\u201cBizarrely, we\u2019re very resilient \u2013 not only in terms of restaurateurs and chefs, but as customers. I still remember everyone coming in and having great nights even though we were getting bailed out and all these things were happening,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt didn\u2019t take away from the happiness of the five years we were in that location. I always say to people [that] our first Cava was like our bad mortgage \u2013 everyone did something during that time when there was way more money, there was just way more possibilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople were getting 110pc mortgages. Signing up to Cava, even though it opened up the possibility for us to do Aniar, for us to do Tartare, it was kind of our bad mortgage. We signed into a lease that we just about got out of, and we were lucky not to end up in the High Court in terms of breaking our lease. It was a learning curve.\u201d<\/p>\n
McMahon recently threw open the doors to Kombu, a ramen and bao bar located on Druid Lane in Galway\u2019s trendy Latin Quarter. He\u2019s not one to sit still, even taking up painting during lockdown and eventually selling a few of his canvases.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s so funny,\u201d he says. \u201cI just picked a random number out of my head and said, \u2018OK, I\u2019ll sell the canvas for this\u2019, and then someone gave out to me for selling them too cheap!\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking of numbers, where does he stand on tipping culture?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get a lot of American guests \u2013 and that\u2019s not only because of the Michelin star, but because we\u2019re a contemporary Irish restaurant and Americans are looking for that Irish experience,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best tipper? I don\u2019t know \u2013 sometimes I think the Irish are the best tippers, because the weird thing is that because Americans sometimes understand that we don\u2019t have a tipping culture, sometimes they don\u2019t tip.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so sometimes, Americans will spend \u20ac500 or \u20ac600 and leave zero tip because they have been told Ireland doesn\u2019t have a tipping culture.\u201d<\/p>\n
Given his culinary expertise, what\u2019s the most he\u2019s personally shelled out for a meal?<\/p>\n
\u201cThe most expensive meal I ate recently was \u20ac1,400 for the two of us in Alain Passard in Paris [L\u2019Arp\u00e9ge]. It might have been a bit more, it might have been \u20ac1,500, and it was for lunch,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Was it worth it?<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you know, I don\u2019t know. Because I suppose I don\u2019t think about food in that way. I mean, I enjoyed it. I know it sounds terrible. I spent \u20ac1,400 on food, and I wouldn\u2019t buy myself a jacket for \u20ac1,000,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s all about priorities,\u201d he adds. \u201cPeople have priorities in relation to what they like spending their money on. Sometimes, I go to places to see what they\u2019re like in terms of a research element.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve spent between \u20ac1,500 and \u20ac2,000 on meals for two people in the past… it\u2019s an experience, it was absolutely top of its game. Was it the best meal of my life? Probably not. The best meal of my life could be a spaghetti bolognese I make in the garden.\u201d<\/p>\n
You can listen to the full conversation with JP McMahon on Money Talks wherever you get your podcasts.<\/p>\n
The content of this podcast is for information purposes and does not constitute investment advice or recommendation of any investment product.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe had signed the lease in 2007… quite an expensive lease, which was a regular lease at the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69484,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,18,19,17,39812],"class_list":{"0":"post-69483","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-eire","10":"tag-ie","11":"tag-ireland","12":"tag-money-talks-podcast"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69483"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69483\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}