Media training has a lot to answer for. We get it – chefs these days have a brand to uphold, a restaurant to promote, a book to sell. Polished is their middle name. Although their back stories are authentic, the tales often sound idyllic, crediting brilliant mothers and role models for their culinary path in life. And then there is JP McMahon, a man as raw as the Galway coastline where he has made his mark.“As far as my grandmother was concerned, if a sausage was black, it was ready. They would taste of aluminium,” he laughs. And despite the fact that five of his six siblings work in the food industry, he says: “We weren’t much of a foodie family. I still remember the first time I had a spaghetti bolognese in a hotel in Tipperary. My mother was saying: ‘Ah, you’re not going to eat that, are you?’”