A labour of love

Keith Friel has a host of successful commercial projects to his name, but his involvement in hospitality has brought him most joy. His latest venture is a quirky bistro offering in Derry’s Ebrington Square.

Keith Friel is an entrepreneur at heart.

At 52, he has already been a successful long-distance lorry driver, operated his own post office and realised a childhood ambition to farm by taking on 50 acres near Strabane where he managed a beef herd.

He knows a good opportunity when he sees one and so when Ebrington Square – a former British Army barracks in Londonderry’s Waterside district – began to emerge as a multi-purpose entertainment and events space for the city some years ago, he was quick to spot the hospitality potential.

Keith and his wife, Yvonne, first registered their interest in opening a restaurant at the 26-acre site around 2011, just as the city’s Peace Bridge – which links the site directly with the town centre – was opened to the public. They didn’t move ahead with the project on that occasion, but in July last year, they finally signed for a vacant former stable block at Ebrington.

Now, just over a year later, Ollie’s is open to the public. It’s a roomy, 75-seater bistro that’s open from 9am until 9pm seven-days-a-week, offering a conventional menu with plenty of variety and an emphasis on scratch cooking with fresh ingredients.

This isn’t Keith’s first foray into the hospitality trade, however. Around 14 years ago, he took on The Harbour Café on the promenade at Portstewart following a suggestion from his brother, Stan Friel, whom many readers will know is the owner of fast-food outlets Superbites and Megabites in Ballymoney.

“I had the café right up until 2014 and I loved it, it did exceptionally well for me,” Keith told LCN recently. “

But Keith, who comes originally from Sion Mills, wasn’t away from hospitality for long. He and Yvonne live only a couple of streets away from Ebrington Square and as Keith explains, the crowd-pulling potential of the giant, open-air venue wasn’t lost on either of them:

“We go through the Square very often when we’re out walking and we knew pretty early on that it was going to be very popular with visitors, particularly after the Peace Bridge had opened to the public.

“We knew what we wanted to do. We wanted to open a place that would cater for all-day demand, rather than somewhere that just focused on an evening service,” adds Keith. “That’s what we created and since opening in December, I think we’ve really become part of the Square. People have told us that it’s hard to believe that we’re open less than year.”

Ollie’s joins a burgeoning hospitality offering at Ebrington. Already in place is James Huey’s innovative Walled City Brewery and restaurant and it’s understood that plans are well advanced for a new distillery and a £12m boutique hotel at the location.

Ollie’s innovative offering is further enhanced with the eye-catching addition to the staff of Parisian pastry chef, Laurent Pironne, who is responsible for all the desserts and home-made breads sold at the restaurant.

“We do all our own bread here, including brioche buns for the burgers and Guinness wheaten which we serve with our chowder,” says Keith. “I think that Laurent has really made a difference to the offering here and we have big plans to make more of that in the future.”

Keith describes the ambience inside Ollie’s as “very relaxing”. Everything in the restaurant is new and he admits that the project represents a “significant investment” for Yvonne and him. But he has confidence in the future – business is already up to expectation and during the summer, they did even better than they expected to.

“Trade has been excellent,” he reports. “We are ideally located, we’re able to take advantage of the big events that are hosted in the Square, such as the Club MTV dance in the middle of September, and during the day, people walk over here for lunch across the bridge. We’re only seven minutes from the city centre via the Peace Bridge and it’s relaxing for people to be able to get right away from everything for a while. We regularly have 100 in here for lunch through the week.”

Ollie’s currently operates on a ‘bring your own bottle’ format, but plans are well advanced to secure a full drinks licence and Keith says that he could have that in place as early as October.

“We’re also planning to open our own artisan bakery at another location,” he reveals. “Our bakery section here at the restaurant is swamped at the minute and we want to relieve the pressure here and make it possible to supply other businesses with our own bread and desserts. Laurent is going to be looking after all this for us.”

Plans are also in place to extend Ollie’s, although Keith won’t say much more about this at present. He hopes to be able to reveal more of those plans by Easter.

“We’re also looking at new premises in Omagh,” he adds. “We’re looking at opening another bistro in the same format as Ollie’s and we’re currently searching for suitable premises. That’s not going to happen immediately though, it might be two years or so before those plans begin to materialise.”

On top of all that, Keith hasn’t given up on his hopes of re-opening on the north coast:

“I’d love to have a restaurant or something similar down there again,” he concedes. “There’s really nothing stopping me from doing that, other than finding suitable premises. And I do know that they are rebuilding the old Montagu Arms at present [in Portstewart] so perhaps, there might be some scope there.”

Still, The Blackbird Sings…

There is considerable history behind the Ebrington Square site, which housed a British army barracks from 1841 until 2003, when the incumbent 8 Infantry Brigade was moved to Shackleton Barracks at Ballykelly, which has also now closed.

The sense of history around the Square is palpable. Much of its original infrastructure is still in place and being put to various uses.

And Ollie’s will be doing its bit to mark that heritage shortly, when it hosts a staging of ‘Still, The Blackbird Sings’, a play by Derry playwrights, Dave Duggan and Jonathan Burgess.

Central to the play are the experiences of acclaimed poet and adventurer, Francis Ledwidge, who spent time at the barracks following the Easter Rising in 1916, before he was shipped off to his ultimate doom at Passchendaele.

The play deals with the conflicted loyalties of an Irish nationalist fighting for the British in World War I and will be performed at Ollie’s in the near future. Keep an eye on the local press for details.