Enda's home-cooking homecoming

When it comes to making culinary waves in top-class Irish restaurants, Cavan people are bringing an exciting new dimension and creativity to the career of being a top chef.

Winner of the RAI Best Chef in Ireland accolade, Enda McEvoy from Virginia, is running the superb Loam Restaurant, just off Eyre Square in Galway, together with his wife Sinead but will soon be cooking for Cavan foodies again.
The twice winner of the Michelin Star award has been in the business for over 20 years and is on his way to the Taste of Cavan festival for an eagerly-awaited demonstration sandwiched between fellow heavyweights Richard Corrigan and Neven Maguire.
“I will be doing a demo dish that reminds me of being home in Cavan,” said Enda, who smiled but remained tight-lipped when asked if he was revealing what the dish contains. We’ll have to wait and see.
In his formative years, he studied in Maynooth College and obtained a degree in English and Sociology. But after he took a summer break in Freiburg, Germany and got a job as a kitchen porter, he ended up staying there for a year and worked in all the different areas of the business.
“I enjoyed doing it and stuck at it after I finished university,” he said.
Enda enjoys working as part of a team in the kitchen and being a chef lends itself to being creative. “You also get immediate results,” he adds.
He worked in the world-renowned Noma restaurant in Copenhagen and the couple’s Loam Restaurant has been open for the past 20 months - a project he describes as a modern Irish restaurant.
He brings his own unique style to his cooking and all his vegetables are sourced from a farm in Loughrea; while all his meat comes from a farm in Roscommon. He also uses free range pork and lamb that has been reared on limestone soil and all the fish comes from Rossaveal, Co Galway.
“Everything from a yoghurt to our butter is made in-house,” he says.
“By sourcing things locally, you build up a network of trust with people.”
He feels that there is still plenty of room to progress and expand the industry further in the years ahead, however, he notes: “It is very hard to find staff that are willing to stay in the industry [but] if you don’t put the graft in, you will not get the results then.”
Though he believes the industry has come on leaps and bounds since he started cooking but that “we have by no means arrived, which is great because it leaves the scope wide open for people that are coming into the industry. There is plenty left to be done.”