“At heart I am an anarchist”, says Simon Haden, which explains – perfectly, succinctly, appositely – why Mr Haden has shapen up to be one of the leading hoteliers of his generation in Ireland.
It helps to be an anarchist when running a country house hotel because both an hotel and a restaurant kitchen are the best examples of creative anarchy we have in our culture, and without a sympathetic feel for anarchic relations you simply won't be able to cope. Mr Haden copes in the beautiful Gregan's Castle on Corkscrew Hill in the Burren with effortless ease, the Bakunin of his profession. In his book “Anarchism”, David Miller writes that anarchism is “amorphous and full of paradoxes and contradictions”. Hmmm: just like life, then, or just like life as an hotel proprietor.
Haden cut his teeth in the late 1980's and early 1990's working in London, so he knows systems, he knows discipline, he knows how to organise. He will admit to admiring Rocco Forte, and the way in which Rocco rose phoenix-like from the wreck of his father's Trust House Forte empire to build his own bespoke brand of hotels. Haden seems to us to have Forte's self-control, his steely will to do his best, but he is not an empire builder like the Forte family. Another key influence is E.F. Schumacher's classic ecological masterwork, “Small is Beautiful”, and this reflects in many ways Haden's success in Gregan's Castle: he sees the world in terms of his own acres, his own landscape – The Burren, O lucky man! – his hospitality and his cuisine.
The success of Gregan's Castle lies in subverting the norms of the country house hotel. You might call it avant garde, for that is what it is, and whilst that sounds like both a paradox and a contradiction, well, just remember that anarchists are happy with that sort of thing. Civilised anarchy? Sure, that's why Gregan's seems so blissfully utopian.