Derry Clarke speaks quickly, but if his diction is fast, his brain works even faster. He once cooked at a Bridgestone Irish Food Guide launch, in Temple Bar's Gallery of Photography. No problem, other than the gallery didn't have any cooking facilities. No problem: Clarke hired a chip van and cooked out of that. The food was sensationally good. The problem solving was simply genius.
His cooking works as well as it does because his dishes – and some of them are iconic dishes by now – seem born out of instinct more than either technique or education. This intellectual accomplishment, this mental compass, perhaps explains why Clarke can square so many circles: his restaurant, L'Ecrivain, is posh, yet it's devoid of stuffiness. His cooking is modern, yet some part of it reaches back to the 1970's when Ireland was setting out its food stall in towns like Kinsale and, crucially, it was in Kinsale that Clarke found his feet. “Peter Barry took me under his wing”, Clarke says of his time in the famous Man Friday restaurant, where he worked under head chef Xavier Poupel. Clarke loved the team spirit of Man Friday, and team spirit is what his own restaurant has been about ever since L'Ecrivain opened in July 1989. Success didn't come immediately – Clarke endured one day in the restaurant when he did not have a single customer – but when it came it was built on a foundation of fine cooking and a joie de vivre that is truly L'Ecrivan's own, which makes it a destination for celebration. He has written two books, out of which his modesty shines through, as well as his sybaritic zest and respect for the good things that come enfolded in food and wine and the restaurant culture he enthusiastically enshrines.