Interview with Bernard McGuane Executive Head Chef. Glenroyal Hotel following 2024 Food Lovers Choice Award.
Bernard McGuane grew up in County Meath but the West of Ireland are in the genes, with a father from County Clare and a mother from Mayo. Now living back in Meath and working in the Glenroyal Hotel and Leisure Club in Maynooth, Bernard spoke to us about his fascinating career so far.
“I started in the business aged 15 in the Castle Arch Hotel in Trim. It’s owned by the Cusack family now, but before that it was owned by Vincent O’Neill and it was called the Wellington Hotel. I was looking for an exit out of school. We had a dairy farm, but I wasn’t interested in farming either. You’d find me in the house doing the baking with my granny.”
As soon as Bernard started in the kitchen in the Castle Arch, he had found his passion in life.
“I loved it, straight off the bat,” he says. “I liked the intensity of it; I had to be very focused. The day would go very fast and I liked the pressure.
“Vincent O’Neill was the head chef; he would do 700 covers on a Sunday lunch. He would pump out the covers working 8am-9pm – never stopped for the whole day. He had a great reputation for very well-cooked food, all done properly.”
Bernard worked in the Castle Arch Hotel until he was 17. When he was 16, however, he was allowed leave school by his parents because he agreed to go to college in CathaI Brugha Street.
“I still remember my lecturers: Tony Clancy, Tony Campbell, Michael O’Neill and Pauline Danaher for pastry. It suited me better than school because we were examined on practical, project and written so I could pass on practical, and project and I didn’t have to worry as much about the written. It was a great system for me.”
However, Bernard’s career began to have a very definite focus when he started to learn about Michelin Star cooking and looking at chefs like Marco Pierre White and Conrad Gallagher.
“I did a placement after college in Cusack hotels in Navan,” says Bernard. “I met Michael Curran there and he had worked in Gleneagles in Scotland where they had a Michelin Star, and he was filling my head with the insights of that experience and telling us to go in that direction. It was working with the best and being the best and pushing on, that’s what attracted me to it.
“I went to work for Conrad Gallagher then. He got his first Michelin Star aged 23 and when I went to work for him, there were a lot of young lads there. It was really intense; this was in 1998 / 1999. Thornton had been around but Gallagher made the big splash in Ireland with food at that time. I worked in Peacock Alley, which was a celebrity spot at the time, and he had a big personality.
“I was hungry and driven and had asked for this as my second-year placement. I was doing 70-80 hours a week. My housemate and I worked in Peacock Alley together and we used to talk for about three hours after a shift. We’d be buzzing still. I started on breads; I did pastry for about 3 months as a commis and then I jumped into the veg. Veg was a very tough section – a lot of components. Mise en place could have 30 items, you had to be fast and organised.”
Bernard worked alongside Dylan McGrath in The Commons before moving to London, where he worked with fellow Meath man Richard Corrigan.
“He comes from 7km away from my home place; my parents knew his family who were farmers also. He had Lindsay House in London and The English Garden in Chelsea. I worked in both. It was very intense work. We would do 60-80 covers, very high-end work. The menu had so much involved in it. Richard’s cooking is based on flavour, he did an Irish stew for an event for the Queen but it was done so well: braised beef dishes, really good flavours, cooked in an old slow-cooked method. Still fine dining, but at a different level again to Peacock Alley. Richard re-invented the cooking my grandmother would have done with the cuts of meat etc he was using. That was his artistry. I did nearly two years there.”
Bernard returned to The Commons, working alongside Aidan Burns, who was to win a Michelin Star in 2001/2002. All three then moved together to La Stampa just before the Celtic Tiger era suddenly ended. Burns and McGrath moved to London while Bernard remained in Ireland.
“I went to the Four Seasons to work with Terry White. I only worked there for a short while but I gained a lot of confidence. It was a 5-star property very different to restaurants but it was a good move for me because it showed me what I could do compared to other chefs.”
Taking a sous-chef position initially, Bernard then moved to Bijou in Rathgar, where he became head chef after three months. He was now 23 and a perfectionist who used to set the entire place up every day in order to ensure everything was done correctly.
Dylan McGrath returned to Ireland and opened The Rustic Stone, where Bernard was to join him for the next ten years.
“Dylan was head chef and he trained me up and I became the head chef there. Then he opened Fade Street Social and I went up there and then he opened Taste. The role really became a managerial role because we went from 50 staff to 150. It grew overnight, it was a great learning experience.”
The Glenroyal Hotel came calling next, offering him the position of Executive Chef and the opportunity to move from the capital back to his native county.
“The move was Covid related,” he says. “I have two young sons and it was a good opportunity for me, I like what they want to do here.
“In The Enclosure at Arkle Bar we are doing the best of Irish beefs, & seafood. Really good, delicious food is my plan for here. Taking the best of what I’ve learned, the technique that goes into the food. It’s restaurant-quality food in a hotel setting.
“It took about 3-4 years to build up the reputation of the restaurant. But we’re proud of where we are now”.
Winning the 2024 Food Lovers Choice Award for the Ancient East region at the Good Food Ireland Awards was a landmark act of recognition. Having brought Michelin-star experience from Peacock Alley, The English Garden, Lindsay House, The Commons, and Mint, making a hotel restaurant stand on its own two feet was a challenge that couldn’t have happened without the right attitude from management.
“Having the support of the team was key to that,” says Bernard. “Now, we have separate teams, and it works very well that way. When I came here first, there were guys on split shifts. Whereas now, the staff are coming in at one o’clock and they’re working until half nine or ten. They all have their own department, and they have their own set area for the day. It means they are more focused as they are not moving around – they’re touching the food, cooking the food and serving it up.
Tucked away in the heart of historic Maynooth you’ll find the Glenroyal Hotel, a 4-star locally owned establishment where guests can expect a traditional Irish welcome and a celebrated family atmosphere. The Glenroyal Hotel is home to the Enclosure Restaurant, where bold flavours are married with simple Irish ingredients, as well as the Arkle Bar, a modern gastropub named after the legendary Irish racehorse.
