Is Waterford having a restaurant renaissance?

Waterford has a wealth of great cafés, chippers and carveries, but in the last number of years, casual fine dining restaurants have been cropping up like daisies across the city. The Waterford News & Star visited three Waterford restaurants to find out more about the Waterford restaurant renaissance.

Everett’s 

Everett’s opened in 2018. Just two years later, the country went into lockdown. Peter Everett, chef and owner, said, “Everything was in little steps. Steps in opening, steps in closing, there was a lot of uncertainty. That was the real stressful part of it. We generally say that we see people at their best and their worst. We see them celebrating happy times, weddings and anniversaries, birthdays, that kind of stuff. People also gather for other, sadder events. There’s always a community around restaurants and in restaurants as well."

What kind of cuisine do you serve?

It's hard to put it into a box. It's modern Irish, I suppose. It’s using good local ingredients – that would be the driving force of the food. (For Peter, ‘modern Irish food’ means using the best Irish produce and using techniques from across the world.)

What did you make of  Rory McIlroy's comments about Irish cuisine? 

I was insulted by that. I think a lot of people were. We’ve great restaurants, we’ve great food and we’ve always had amazing produce. 

What are you most excited about in terms of Irish food right now?

Customers are open to new flavours, new experiences. My general ethos would always come back to ingredients – we have plenty of interesting produce here that is the envy of the world.

Do you have any favourite foods that are produced in Waterford?

Comeragh lamb would spring to mind. It’s a great product from the locality that’s delivered by the farmers themselves. We don’t have a lot of cheese makers in the county; we’ve only one at the moment, so that might be an opening for someone.

Why did you become a chef?

I suppose I like eating. I definitely liked sweet things as a kid; I remember baking with my mother.

Bodega 

Cormac Cronin has witnessed the restaurant industry change first-hand. He opened Bodega with his wife, Louise, in July of 2001.

What inspired you to open a restaurant?

Foolishness and craziness. I grew up in North Cork and my aunt and grandmother had a hotel in Charleville, which is where I got the feel for the industry.

I remember in sixth year, looking at what I’d like to do, I always did like customer service. So I went to Cathal Brugha Street in Dublin to do Hotel Management, which I stayed in until Easter of the first year.

I was big into rugby at that age. This industry and playing rugby don’t really go together, so I chose rugby. I ended up going to the south of France to a club where my brother played. I played for a season, and it was fantastic.

Louise, my wife, we’ve been together on and off since we were 16, so she was there for the summer with me. It wasn’t very common for there to be foreign players in a club, and my brother was a legend over there, so I was kind of treated like royalty. Any chance they got, they invited me out to dinners.

At that age, my knowledge and my wife’s knowledge of food was just very basic Irish cooking. We got introduced to everything you can imagine – frog’s legs, foie gras and all kinds of Basque foods. That’s what gave us a decent palate and an appreciation for food.

What has changed about food culture in Waterford over the last 25 years?

Back in 2001, there’d be no mention of a supplier anywhere on the menu. Now we have Crowe's Farm, O’Flynn’s Butchers, and Kilmore Quay fish. It makes no sense whatsoever not to mention your suppliers on your menu. It's free promotion for the local suppliers, and you want your local supplier to survive. At the moment, it’s a struggle to survive.

There’s a convenience culture nowadays. Years ago, mainly mothers would go to the butcher, the greengrocer, and the fishmonger. Now, everyone is so stuck for time – well, we have the same time now as we did years ago, but we want to do things as quickly as possible. Now everyone does one shop, they get it all delivered. I can say 100% the steaks, the fish, and the veg are better quality from local greengrocers and butchers.

Union Wine, Bar and Kitchen 

Steven McArdle is a chef from Antrim, and Morgan Vanderkamer, front of house and sommelier,  is originally from Canada. They opened Union in 2022.

Neither of you are from Waterford, how have you found adjusting to the city?

We had very little tradespeople or suppliers, so it was difficult but fun to get to know new people.

The wine vault in the medieval museum is pretty sacred for Ireland. The Viking Triangle area is beautiful. It's like a sleeping dragon. It's got a lot more going for it than Kilkenny.

Are there many fine wine lovers in Waterford?

People are pretty adventurous in what they're drinking. It's set up to be an explorative wine list where you're trying different things.

Most of our customers are locals, so you start to form relationships based on what they drink, and they ask for recommendations.

Our most popular wines are the ones where you wouldn’t expect them to be growing in particular regions. For example, a white Rioja.

What is your most popular dish? 

Our steak is always our most popular, but we also sell an extraordinary amount of fish. We buy scallops, brill, langoustines, and clams. Clams are a great local product.

We run two types of menus. The bar menu has been slower to take off, but in the last year it's found its feet. It’s a bit more fun, a bit more of a communal offering. You can mix and match, and the menu changes a lot. It’s unpredictable but a fun way to eat.