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Chop chop

He spoke to Katy McGuinness

The world isn't keeping pace with Dylan McGrath's ambitions. Awarded a Michelin star at 30, the bad boy of Irish cooking is frustrated with his own restaurant, and his own compatriots' palates.

'I'm driven by wanting to make money, and at the moment I'm not' Dylan McGrath

Dylan McGrath

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Dylan McGrath has had quite a year. 2008 got off to a good start with the award of a first and much-anticipated Michelin star to his Mint restaurant in Ranelagh, Dublin. Then there was that documentary. The Pressure Cooker showed the 31-year-old chef at his potty-mouthed, tyrannical best (or worst – anecdotally, viewers took umbrage and threatened never to cross his threshold), roaring abuse at his staff. Gossip-column tittle-tattle told of rowdy late nights, nightclub altercations (Nicky Byrne took umbrage, says McGrath, disingenuously, because he didn't know whether the singer was in Boyzone or Westlife), swipes at other chefs (he dubbed Richard Corrigan's Bentley's "nice and simple", which he says he intended as a compliment) and dalliances with a succession of girls about town. Latterly there have been reports of financial trouble – Trevor White (late of The Dubliner) has been writing that McGrath is €250k in the red.

And then of course there's the food – the sublime, beautiful, ridiculous, inspirational, innovative food that McGrath produces, in between all the rest. Would that it were always the food that was the first thing to come to mind in any discussion of McGrath.

McGrath arrives late but charmingly apologetic into the Shelbourne around noon on a Monday. Chefs traditionally have their big night out on Sunday and Dylan's been out of bed less than half an hour. "I was on the beer last night," he says, mock-sheepishly, although he looks well enough, spivvy in retro-chic slacks. With an accent that veers erratically between his two home towns of Dublin and Belfast, a scalping of a haircut and a massive tattoo that lurks somewhere under the fitted, open-a-button-too-low shirt, he's a master at camping up the bad-boy image that has stood him in good media stead since his return to Ireland from London.

"I've been back in Ireland for two years now," he says, relaxing back into a plush sofa as he horses into hangover-quelling mince pies and coffee, "and it's taken that long for me to get to understand what works here. I've learned that in Dublin, food is generally secondary to ambience. Some of the most successful restaurants in Dublin serve very mediocre food. It's because there's no real food culture here – I mean what have we got? F***ing colcannon and champ? The French and Italians have a great tradition of peasant food – all those cassoulets and terrines and the like have been refined and refined to the point that is very sophisticated, and the punters know about food. In Ireland, there are a very small percentage of people who know good food. Most people don't have a clue. The ones who do – the people who travel and have been to Alinea in Chicago, or El Bulli, or the great brasseries in Paris – are in a minority. But that's the nature of the beast, and there's no point whinging about it."

McGrath's always been honest about what motivates him. "I'm driven by wanting to make money, and at the moment I'm not. I want to move to a better space." (The cramped space Mint occupies is the one negative that critics, me included, return to over and over. It must drive McGrath mad, not least because he agrees – if he had a reception area he reckons he could do 20 more covers a night with the same number of staff.) "I've been looking for somewhere ever since I came back. There's one city centre place that I have my eye on but I'm not sure if I'll ever get it. It's a funny time to be looking – in one way it's good because property is cheaper, but in another it's bad because the banks aren't lending. It's Catch 22. I don't think though that I'll have a new 100-cover Mint within the next year. Right now I'm concentrating on making Mint as is as full as it can be every day that it's open. We're booked out on Friday and Saturday nights a month or two in advance, so now I'm focussing on the rest of the week, making sure that we keep the wheels turning, because everybody says next year is going to get worse. It's about securing the business and capitalising on the star and the success that we've had already."

Mint's new early-evening tapas menu – a bargain at €55 a head for five courses including two glasses of wine – is a first salvo in the battle to stay afloat.

Plans for the year ahead include an ambition to expand the Dylan McGrath brand – he's actively working on, and scouting locations for, a concept for a diffusion restaurant. "There's room," says McGrath, "for somewhere serving my food at more accessible prices. I want to do volume. When Troy Maguire was at L'Gueleton it was revolutionary – there were queues round the block at six in the evening because he was somebody who'd trained at the top end but was cooking well for the middle market using ingredients like foie gras and snails."

And if McGrath does a cookbook, it will, he says, be aimed at the domestic market, with mass appeal, rather than a cheffy tome.

McGrath is a savvy media operator, understanding the need to keep working on awareness of himself and of Mint. "I do it myself now; we don't have a PR company anymore. I'm blessed that the press are interested in me without me having to sell it anymore – what happens now is the layering and flashing of what we are. Conrad Gallagher [with whom McGrath used to work] understood the media without having talent, and Kevin Thornton has the talent but doesn't understand the media. If you have both, you win."

Word is that things in the kitchen at Mint have calmed down, and that it is a happier place to work than it may have been at the beginning of the year. The ambience in the restaurant has also relaxed, although you would never describe Mint as laidback.

"Fish rots from the head," says McGrath. "My mood dictates the mood in the restaurant. I'm now surrounded by people who know what they're doing. I have a great staff; they've allowed me to have a better quality of life, to get some balance. I even have a girlfriend now. I took a holiday earlier this year and went on a tour of three-star restaurants – just to watch and observe. In Jean-Georges in New York I had a three-course meal that cost $425 with a glass of wine accompanying each course. I was on my own. Over the other side of the room was a guy who was asleep. He was in one of the very finest restaurants in the world where his dinner was costing him nearly 500 bucks and he was asleep. His wife just kept eating, ignoring him. Here in Dublin, people save for a month or two to come in to Mint. Sure I have people who can come in without thinking about the cost, but nothing like the number that there would be in another city."

For someone with McGrath's ambition, who talks of the need always to progress and improve, to keep re-inventing himself in order to have career longevity, the single star is never going to be enough. But whether he will be able to go beyond that in Dublin is an issue that exercises him.

"The menu we have now is written around and produced in accordance with the staff that I have. I have six chefs and a box of a kitchen. I can only get so much out of that staff. The limitations dictate how far we can go at the moment. So for the moment the priority is consistency, making sure that plate after plate after plate is executed to a certain standard in terms of the eating and the appearance.

"It's frustrating though because the technique could be elaborated if I had more resources. When we made the documentary I had three chefs doing the work that 15 would be doing in a Michelin-starred kitchen anywhere else in the world. In London, somebody like Gordon Ramsay has career-driven, motivated chefs with experience in some of the best restaurants in the world knocking on his door every day wanting to work for free. Here I get someone who left Café Bar Deli last week – that's the difference.

"I wonder what life would be like if only I had those resources, what wouldn't be possible then?"