For three decades Tim O'Sullivan has been cooking in Renvyle House, and polishing a cuisine which quietly operates outside of any boundaries of modern or traditional. We might explain his singular approach by virtue of his training, for he learnt in the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney, in the days when a stage there for a young man was a prized possession, and things were done and learnt correctly because the chain of hotels had a true public service ethos. But away from the GSH, it was Gerry Galvin, of Kinsale and Galway, whose modern take on Irish cooking most fashioned O'Sullivan's attitudes and approaches to food and cooking.
Indeed, one could argue that Galvin's cooking has always had a public service ethos, his food being good to eat, but equally good to discuss. Mr O'Sullivan's food is just the same, clever without being clever-clever, smart but without any artifice, intriguing beneath the satisfactions of goodness. Unlike Galvin, O'Sullivan is a very private individual, and whilst he has one book of his recipes written, he otherwise keeps a very low profile, finding his public service remit, and the satisfactions of his calling, in his work in the kitchens of Renvyle.