Joe McNamee

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Joe McNamee pre-dates the era of professional specialisation. He has a CV that might have been typical in the 1960s, but which has all but vanished today. He has been writer, cook and graphic designer, with interludes as a roadie, musician, market stallholder, and landscape gardener. That is the old hippy route, of course, when living was about experiences – good and bad – rather than just money and security. And, as we know now, the hippies were right.

He cooked with Seamus O'Connell, and in London, in Peyton Place, he would serve caviar and frog's legs to city suits. “Mind you, I learned things there”, he says, and that may be McNamee's secret: he keeps learning things.

His first cooking job was in Mandy's in Cork, where he learned to despise fast food and learned to love the rhythm of a professional kitchen. In the early 1990's, he worked at The Real Olive with Toby Simmonds, knocking up an orange dressing for feta cheese, setting up and working markets in Galway and Kenmare. He has an analyst's eye, but from experience, which is the right way to analyse. He writes for all the major Irish media.

 

http://josephdmcnamee.com

www.josephdmcnamee.com