{"id":1187552,"date":"2026-09-05T08:21:51","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T08:21:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1187552\/"},"modified":"2026-09-05T08:21:51","modified_gmt":"2026-09-05T08:21:51","slug":"sophie-clarke-northern-irelands-chefs-are-competitors-but-theyre-also-a-community-the-irish-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1187552\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Clarke: Northern Ireland\u2019s chefs are competitors, but they\u2019re also a community \u2013 The Irish News"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have long been of the opinion that the restaurant industry is a fairly ruthless, cut-throat environment.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I have been too heavily influenced by what has been portrayed on TV, but in my head professional kitchens have always looked like some strange hybrid of Hell\u2019s Kitchen and The Bear.<\/p>\n

Big personalities, big ambitions and, naturally, even bigger egos.<\/p>\n

Recently, however, I have had to rethink that rather dramatic narrative.<\/p>\n

\"Review:<\/a>\"Sophie<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the past few months myself and Irish News videographer Dylan Hegarty have been working on a new social media series called Last Orders.<\/p>\n

\"HusbandHusband and wife team Conor and Elizabeth Brennan share their Last Orders with The Irish News.
\nPICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN <\/p>\n

For those of you who have yet to watch or read it (why not?), the premise is fairly straightforward. We go around asking local chefs where they would go for breakfast, lunch and dinner if it was their last day on earth.<\/p>\n

Nothing is off limits. In fact, if somebody was feeling particularly self-assured, they could quite easily nominate their own restaurant for all three meals. So far, nobody has.<\/p>\n

Instead, every chef we have spoken to has enthusiastically reeled off a list of other local restaurants, caf\u00e9s, bakeries and food businesses they love, often going into tremendous detail about exactly what they would order and why.<\/p>\n

This enthusiasm is wonderful for me. It is slightly less so for Dylan, who then has the unenviable task of turning several minutes of passionate discussion about pastries, sandwiches and tasting menus into a video lasting roughly 90 seconds.<\/p>\n

Although, I must admit, he does an excellent job.<\/p>\n

We have only filmed four episodes so far, yet already other chefs have been getting in touch asking if they can take part, not because they particularly want to talk about themselves, but because they want an excuse to shine a light on the places they love. I think that is rather lovely.<\/p>\n

The more time I spend covering Northern Ireland\u2019s food scene, the more apparent it becomes that, for all the awards, reviews, rankings and inevitable comparisons, the people working within it do not seem to regard one another simply as competition – it feels much more like a community.<\/p>\n

Perhaps that is because they appreciate and understand better than most just how difficult it is to keep a hospitality business going at the minute.<\/p>\n

\"HeadHead chef at Luna in Ballyhackamore, Jack McCurry shares his Last Orders with The Irish News. PICTURE: BRIAN LINCOLN <\/p>\n

Rising costs, staffing pressures and customers who are monitoring their own spending mean that opening the doors every morning is no small achievement.<\/p>\n

When you know exactly what it takes to keep your own place running, perhaps you become more inclined to celebrate somebody else managing to do the same thing.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, there is something profoundly and refreshingly generous about watching people who could quite easily spend their time promoting themselves using the opportunity to champion somebody else.<\/p>\n

So, it turns out my image of the restaurant industry may have been slightly unfair.<\/p>\n

There are still big personalities and big ambitions, certainly, but thankfully there also appears to be plenty of room at the table for everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I have long been of the opinion that the restaurant industry is a fairly ruthless, cut-throat environment. Perhaps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1187553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[2378,56666,4414,1144,2599,16,15],"class_list":["post-1187552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-belfast","tag-chef","tag-kitchen","tag-northern-ireland","tag-restaurant","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117217472440484419","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1187552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1187552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1187553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1187552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1187552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1187552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}