Derry is from Clonskeagh, and began working in restaurants during his summer holidays from school. He trained as a chef, and worked in various restaurants before opening L'Ecrivain in 1989.

Sallyanne is from Crumlin, and worked in her mum's shop, Sallyanne's, after school, and was also a model and radio presenter. She went on to work in the insurance industry, and had her own agency, Parker Insurance.

Derry and Sallyanne live in Saggart with their children, Sarah May (17) and Andrew (11).

L'Ecrivain will be part of the outdoor food and drink festival, Taste of Dublin, which runs from 14 to 17 June in the Iveagh Gardens, Dublin 2. www. tasteofdublin07. ie Sallyanne on Derry Derry and I met through friends in 1985, and I thought he was great fun. He still teases me about the hot pants I was wearing that night, because I was quite tall and very slim then, and wore my skirts very short, which used to give my poor dad a heart attack.

Derry asked me out a couple of times, but I said no, as there was a group of us all going out together and having great fun. I had to go to a big insurance industry reception one night, and the guy I was seeing on and off couldn't come with me. I asked Derry instead, and we had a ball, and it all took off from there.

When he asked me to marry him, I told him to go home and sleep it off, but we got married in 1987, when I was 25 and Derry was 30, and then we had our two children, Sarah May and Andrew.

Derry worked in various restaurants, and he really wanted to open his own one. We had a few bob saved, and we went to the bank, and opened L'Ecrivain in 1989, initially in a smaller premises on Baggot Street. I kept my day job for as long as I could, to pay the bills, and used to come over at night to work in the restaurant. I remember this lovely woman commenting that I didn't really do much apart from checking people in and doing the bills from 7-10 at night.

She asked how I got a job like that with no training and no experience, and I told her . . . "I slept with the boss!"

It was tough enough at first, as Derry was working day and night, and he ended up getting a bad bout of shingles. I came to work full-time in the restaurant, and we had to draw boundaries from the beginning.

The way it works is that I'm the business person, and I look after the front of house. Derry's the creative one, and the kitchen is his domain, because if I looked after the food we'd be in big trouble. I stopped cooking once I met him, because my speciality was gourmet food from a can.

Derry's a very loving and giving father, and he's also very compassionate, loving and thoughtful as a husband. The business wouldn't be the success it is now, if he wasn't as committed, organised and driven. We had great fun putting together our recipe book, Not Just a Cookbook, along with Tom Doorley, which also paints a picture of the history and all of the elements that come together to form L'Ecrivain.

The restaurant business is notorious for staff moving on and being poached, but we've been lucky, as many of ours have been with us for years. Somebody told us a while ago, that we're like Hotel California . . . You can check out but you can never leave.

Derry on Sallyanne

I was first attracted to Sallyanne because she's very bubbly, lively and easy-going, and I knew I wanted to marry her after two weeks. She told me to take a hike, but she eventually said yes after numerous proposals. My brother-in-law Tom said that he hoped I was earning the �75,000 per year needed to keep a woman, and on the day I got married, I told him that he was wrong . . . it was more like �150,000. And worth every penny.

When we opened L'Ecrivain in 1989, there was no money around in the country, and in the first few months, there would be literally nobody in the restaurant some weekday nights. We used to ring around our families to come in, just so it wouldn't look empty.

The success we have now wouldn't have happened without Sallyanne. Once she came on board in 1990, I could drop all of the front-of-house and finance stuff, and I was delighted because I find money boring . . . I think all chefs do.

Sallyanne is very strong, loving, affectionate and tactile, and she's loads of fun and a great mother. She's very fair and forgiving, and she wants the best for all of us. The kids are very strong and independent, which is down to Sallyanne, and she has really prepared them for life.

If we were doing it all over again it, I would probably say, "Let's not get a restaurant together, " and I think Sallyanne would agree with me there, because there's no doubt about it, being business partners does add stress to a marriage partnership. It's not easy when you have children, and we're lucky that we've had great help from our families and various nannies.

Outside of work, we like to travel, and I like to spend time on my boat. I was a real brown-noser and named it Sallyanne, even though I didn't score any points for that. Sallyanne comes out with me now and then, but coming back from Wales last year, she asked me if I could do anything about the waves because they were too highf Sallyanne and I have never once had an argument about money, which is quite amazing for a couple in business.

We're both Virgos, so we like detail, cleanliness and being organised.

We don't like people taking shortcuts, and are always striving to be better, so we can be very hard to please as bosses.

Our staff are brilliant, and when we're not there the place still runs the same, but we're known as the owners, so people miss us when we're off.