Meet Ireland's only female Michelin-starred chef, farmer's daughter Danni Barry

Danni Barry has to smile when people ask what it’s like to be at “the top of your game” as Ireland’s only female Michelin-starred chef?

“Got up this morning, drove my Astra in, had to make my own tea out of a pot of water, prep all day, I’ll be here until 11 o’clock at night, I’ll probably mop the floor before I leave,” she lists with a laugh.

“But it’s kind of important for people to see that, because it gets a wee bit glamorised sometimes, the industry. You get people coming into it thinking, ‘oh I want to be a famous Michelin-starred chef’ or ‘I want this’, but you’re going, ‘there’s an awful lot to that, you know.’”

Indeed, even on the day that the head chef in Deanes EIPIC in Belfast won her star in 2015 – just 18 months after opening – she was so preoccupied prepping a load of crabs that she missed the announcement.

“I was just covered in crab juice and my phone was ringing and ringing,” she says, explaining that when she eventually got the news, she was “just speechless”.

But the celebrations had to wait.

“The sous chef here was kind of like: ‘Ah, I really feel like you should be able to go and do something,’” she recalls. “And I was like: ‘Nah, I’ll just go back and do the crabs!’”

And it’s clear within minutes of meeting the 31-year-old farmer’s daughter that she’s the last person to get carried away by the hype – at least, not when there’s work to be done.

RURAL ROOTS

It’s an ethic she attributes to her upbringing on a beef farm in Mayobridge, Co Down – even if she did not always appreciate it.

“When all your summer holidays are spent gathering potatoes or rolling bales of hay or whatever, at the time you’re not really going: ‘Oh, this is going to shape my life,’” she says.

“But I think the work ethic that you do kind of need in this industry definitely comes from my daddy. He would have worked all hours of the day and it was never a chore. He enjoys being a farmer and being on the land, so it wasn’t work for him, and I feel the same coming in.

“People talk about the hours and they go: ‘Oh, how do you do that?’ but you don’t notice it when you love what you do … when you really enjoy something, it doesn’t become a job as such. It just becomes part of you.”

Food wise, it was a typical Irish childhood: “Very meat and two veg” with lots of baking and sandwich making at harvest time. Certainly, Danni had no intention of becoming a chef when she started washing plates part-time in a local restaurant to save for a car while studying for her A-levels. But after becoming hooked, she shocked her teachers by leaving school to attend catering college.

“Fair play to my parents mostly, because they went: ‘OK, you can go to catering college for a year and you can get some actual experience and then we’ll talk about it. If it doesn’t look like it’s going to be a career for you, you’re going to go back to school. But we’re happy to let you have a year,’” she recalls. “And sure that’s 17 years ago!”

As part of the course, all students were encouraged to find work experience. At the time, a chef that Danni knew from home was working in Belfast for the Michelin-starred restauranteur Michael Deane, so gathering her courage, she knocked on the door.

“I came up with a CV that had like, one job on it,” she recalls. “They were probably thinking: ‘This young girl from the country, she’s not going to last five minutes here’ or whatever – but that’s how it started.”

In the end, Danni decided not to return to college and instead honed her craft by spending four years with Deane, before taking time out to travel and work in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Korea.

She also spent nine months working on an executive yacht in Spain, where she had the opportunity to pick her ingredients and write her own menus. Equally formative was a stint with British chef Simon Rogan.

“I could cook before I went to Simon Rogan, but the understanding of the produce we use and why we use it, how we should treat it and where it comes from and things like that, that’s all that I learned when I was with him,” she says.

SHOOTING FOR THE STAR

By then, however, Danni was ready to come home. So when her former mentor, Michael Deane, got in touch to say he wanted her to head-up his new fine-dining venture, EIPIC, it seemed like the perfect fit.

Though was she also aware that Michael was focused on getting his Michelin star back after losing it after 14 years when he had to restructure the business following a devastating flood?

“Pretty much,” responds Danni.

“We wanted to make a great restaurant and obviously I don’t think you can chase accolades because I think it will distract you from what you’re doing, which is basically making great food and providing really good service and getting customers to come back. That’s really what the restaurant is for. There’s no point having awards on the door and empty chairs. I don’t think you can go in with the mentality that, ‘oh we’re going to go and get a star’.

“But it was certainly in the background that Michael wanted to get it back.”

Offering both a “Forty Pounds” and a “Sixty Pounds” set tasting menu, Danni says that her aim at EIPIC is to “showcase the best of Northern Ireland” by putting local suppliers on the plate, whether it’s Still Waters Fishing, Hannan Meats, Abernethy Butter or The Walled Garden at Helen’s Bay.

“So the fish guy will text me on a Monday and whatever he lands, that’s what we’ll be using that week,” says Danni. “There really are no gimmicks. It’s just proper food.”

Even Danni gets involved in the supply chain, often foraging for wild garlic or sea veg if driving the coast road from the family farm in Mayobridge to Belfast.

“It’s not a bad way to start your day,” she smiles, “as well as getting stuff from here and having that whole sense of place on the plate, it’s actually just for your head space.”

ROLE MODEL

Because once she’s in the kitchen, there is no rest. It might come as a surprise that the day we visit, there are just three chefs in the kitchen at EIPIC and, interestingly, all are female.

As only the second Irish woman ever to win a Michelin star – and as the first woman to win Irish Chef of the Year – Danni is aware she is seen as a role model.

“So you have to embrace it I suppose because it’s only for a short period of time,” she says, explaining how as a younger chef, she looked up to Angela Hartnett, who worked with Gordon Ramsey and appeared in the Hell’s Kitchen TV series.

“I always remember Gordon Ramsey being famous, but she was always in the background, solid and strong, while he was away off shouting at people,” she says.

“So for me there’s always been strong female people to look up to in the industry, but there just aren’t as many. Certainly to be a mentor to anybody is a great thing.”

Last year, Danni participated in the Athrú conference in Galway to discuss gender roles within the industry. She says she was shocked by some of the “horror stories” that some of the female chefs recounted and feels that while she has been lucky, there is still some way to go.

“Yes, at times, a delivery driver will walk past me and he’ll go to the first boy he’ll see to sign his docket. Obviously with my name as well being Danni, when I first started here there was a lot of like: ‘Oh it’s some guy from England’ And if they met you they were like: ‘Oh you’re the chef? You’re like 20, you’re like a child … and you’re a girl,’” she says, adding that lack of confidence is still an issue for women – herself included – but that it’s important to get out and be involved in industry organisations and events

“A lot of people would say if you go you’re the token female,” she adds, “but if you’re not there, nobody’s there.”

However, she is keen to stress that in terms of production, there are many female food heroes – name-checking Alison Abernethy of Abernethy Butter, Mag Kirwan of Goatsbridge Trout and Birgitta Curtin of The Burren Smokehouse, to name a few.

“That’s one thing I noticed down in Athrú,” she says, “the women producers are everywhere.”

And given her own background, longer-term Danni would like to work back on the family farm, offering a more interactive experience where people could pick and cook the produce themselves.

“Something a bit like Ballymaloe but in the north would be the big dream,” she says. “Just something a bit more back on the land, not as fast-paced.”

But for now, there’s menus to write, ingredients to prep, floors to mop – and people to feed.

“A lot of it is like people-pleasing,” surmises Danni.

“Still now, whenever you see clean plates come back off a table, you know people have enjoyed their food and that’s really all you’re doing – you’re just making food that people want to eat.” CL

Deanes EIPIC, 28-40 Howard St,

Belfast | 0044-28-9033-1134 |

www.deaneseipic.com