Getting a life

Niall McKenna’s Belfast restaurants have gained some impressive plaudits recently as the group sets new standards in the city for aesthetics, innovation and good food. He’s been telling Russell Campbell about his award-winning approach.

Any consideration of the food and restaurant scene in Belfast at present would surely be woefully incomplete without reference to Niall and Joanne McKenna and the run-away success of their burgeoning restaurant chain in the city.

Niall’s torch-bearing flagship venue – James Street South – was deservedly named Restaurant of the Year at last month’s Licensed & Catering News Awards. That honour came after the venue was also named Restaurant of the Year by the 2015 Waitrose Good Food Guide.

But James Street South isn’t the only one of Niall’s city centre eateries currently attracting attention. His latest venture, the compact Cast & Crew in Titanic Quarter is capturing a lucrative slice of trade in a region to which 20,000 people already travel to work and to which tourists flock every day (see box-out).

In the city centre, his other concerns – chic Hadski’s in Commercial Court and the Bar + Grill at James Street South – not to mention his flourishing cookery school – are keeping the 44-year-old restaurateur at the forefront of the city’s culinary revolution. The Bar + Grill was also among the awards recently, when it claimed a coveted Bib Gourmand in the official 2015 Michelin Guide – one of only three new awards in Northern Ireland.

“For the size of the population in Belfast, there’s now a crazy number of restaurants and if you don’t do a good job then you’re going to the wall,” says Niall, who admits that keeping his bank balance in the black is one of his strongest motivators in business:

“It’s the thing that concerns me most,” he concedes. “And anyone can go out of business. It could happen to me or to anyone in this industry very quickly. If you run a bad business it’s not going to survive no matter what else you do.”

For that reason, the Dunmurry-born chef keeps a close eye on the costs of running the chain: “I’m not a miserable guy,” he says. “I just need to know the fine detail.”

In the very early days, Niall McKenna found his feet in the restaurant trade working for one-time doyen, Paul Rankin, who changed the face of dining in the city in the late 80s when he opened Roscoff’s.

But it was Niall’s time in London, where he worked with the owners of the stylish Firmdale Hotel chain, Tom and Kit Kemp, which, he feels, most influenced his professional development. The pair knew little of the restaurant trade, but Niall credits them with instilling in him an abiding appreciation of the role of design and style in the success of any hospitality venture.

A period spent with Image Restaurants’ founder, Chris Bodker, followed before Niall returned to Belfast around 2000. He spent some time working at Ten Square in Belfast, but the fire of his own ambition had been stoked and not long after returning home, he identified a site on James Street South where he believed he could strike out for himself.

With that in mind, he set off back to London again to work at the ultra-trendy Circus cabaret restaurant. Oddly though, he wasn’t to be found in the kitchens at the venue – instead, he worked front-of-house and behind the bar so that he could understand how each constituent part of the restaurant business actually worked.

It’s now 12 years since James Street South opened its doors and today, there are four restaurants in total in the group with an as-yet unnamed fifth set to follow next year at Donegall Quay in Belfast.

Niall and Joanne were recognised for their pioneering work in the hospitality sector in May this year when they collected an Oscar for ‘Outstanding Contribution’ at the Janus Awards. And a month later, the James Street South venue was named LCN’s Restaurant of the Year, defeating some stiff competition in the process, including The Boathouse in Bangor, Comber’s Old Schoolhouse Inn and Ian Orr’s Browns in Town in Londonderry.

Niall believes that awards like this are important primarily as a confidence-booster for his staff:

“A lot of them are very quick to knock themselves, but things like this will build their self-belief and encourage them to let their personalities come through,” he says. “And if they leave us, they’ll take that with them, which is good for the industry.”

For Niall, it’s also vindication of an innovative approach to the restaurant trade that saw him recruit eight raw apprentices onto the group’s staff last year. Five of those hopefuls finished the course and three are now full-time members of Niall’s team. In fact, so successful was the scheme that the number of prospective apprentices has been doubled for 2015-16.

The number of staff employed by Niall will top 120 when the Donegall Quay premises opens next year and it’s then that he believes the apprenticeship scheme will really begin to pay dividends.

As for Niall, he admits that he and his family don’t eat out too often. He and Joanne have two children and if they venture out for food, he says they’ll go to Shu, Ox, 27 Mumbai or perhaps, The Mourne Seafood Bar – but getting that time away from work is difficult, he concedes.

“Getting a life for my family, getting more quality time with them and trying to reduce the time that we spend at work is a priority for me,” he says. “And that goes for my staff as well. We’re trying to get everyone down to 50 hours in the week maximum. I know of restaurants in Belfast where people are working 80-hour weeks, but we’re trying to get people their lives back so that we can keep them in the industry.”

In three years’ time, Niall hopes to have five restaurants open in Belfast, although he admits that he’ll be “the oldest swinger in the trade” by that stage.

Guilt, he says, is one of the most unfortunate aspects of long hours spend building a successful business:

“When I do get time, I want to spend it with my kids,” he adds. “Kids are the biggest grounder for most people, it’s no wonder that sleep deprivation is used as a torture technique, anyone with kids will be familiar with that. But if I have the choice of going out or playing Xbox with my kids, I’m going to pick Xbox very time, that’s just the way that it is.”

Sails set for Titanic venture…

Cast and Crew is Niall McKenna’s latest venture. Located in former First Trust bank premises opposite the iconic Titanic Belfast centre, the compact 90-seater licensed restaurant offers quality casual dining in a very modern and relaxed setting.

With fresh, local produce sourced from the same suppliers that service James Street South, Cast and Crew is already going down very well with visitors to the Titanic exhibition and the thousands of workers who are based in Titanic Quarter every day.

The venue is open for breakfast and lunch and it caters for private parties in the evening.

“”We are committed to developing and sustaining Northern Ireland’s growing tourism offering and this further investment represents our confidence in this expanding market,” said Niall recently.