Northern Ireland has a pretty good record when it comes to producing top chefs. There’s Michael Deane, who has conquered Belfast with his various restaurants; Paul Rankin, who won the country its first Michelin star in 1999 and was a regular on Ready Steady Cook; and more recently Clare Smyth, who rose to fame as the head chef of Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, now has her own restaurant Core, and is currently the World’s Best Female Chef according to the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. Tommy Heaney, originally from a small town called Crumlin outside of Belfast, is one of the country’s more recent culinary stars. But it was by chance that he discovered his love for cooking.
‘At school I was only ever interested in sport, because it was competitive, and art, because it was creative,’ he explains. ‘I was always getting into trouble which wasn’t good for my mum, especially because she was a nursery teacher, so one summer when school was over she sent me to live with my uncle in the US. I started off washing dishes, then helped out with salads and stuff, then one day the head chef didn’t turn up and I was thrown in the deep end. The manager had to tell me what the different cuts looked like, and I had no idea what the difference was between sea bass and salmon or anything, but after the very tough lunch service – which probably wasn’t even that busy – I got a bit of feedback from customers saying they’d enjoyed their food and that was it. I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.’
When Tommy returned home, he counted the days until he could leave school and start working in professional kitchens, flying back to the US during Christmas and the summer holidays to work with his uncle. When he finished his GCSEs, he moved there permanently to start learning his craft. ‘I never went to catering college or anything, I just learnt on the job,’ he says. ‘I went to a few different places in the US, and when I was about eighteen I came home and started working for a guy called Tony Hughes, who was a great chef. He taught me so much, particularly things you don’t really see anymore like the classics.’
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Tommy Heaney: from Crumlin to Cardiff
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