Happy at home

It’s now six months since Cathal Duncan took on the role of head chef at Hadski’s in Belfast, bringing with him experience at some of Belfast and London’s best eateries.

Originally from Dublin, 31-year-old Cathal Duncan reached the high-point in his kitchen career six months ago when he took the job as head chef at Niall McKenna’s award-winning Belfast restaurant, Hadski’s.

It’s an ideal post for Cathal, who has lived in Belfast for most of his life, but that’s not to say that his work in the trade hasn’t taken him much further afield in the past.

He began his catering career at the King’s Head in Belfast when he was 20, working as a commis chef and studying at Belfast Met for a level two NVQ. Six months later, he had re-located to the prestigious Merchant Hotel in Belfast where he spent two-and-a-half years, eventually progressing to the level of chef de partie.

“The Merchant was brilliant,” he recalls. “With it being a hotel, I learned a range of different skills. We did banqueting and we also had the fine dining restaurant, so there was a broad range of things to learn.”

Eventually, Cathal was lured away to London where he took up a post as chef de partie at the former Rousillon restaurant in Pimlico – his first experience of cooking in a Michelin-starred eatery. That venue closed its doors about six months later and Cathal moved on to the Sir Terence Conran-designed Boundary restaurant in Shoreditch.

But by the time he was 26, Cathal had yielded to the lure of home and returned to a job at newly-opened Ox in Belfast:

“I’d been in London for nearly four years by that stage and I fancied a change,” says Cathal. “I had considered France, but then I got offered a job at Ox and I came back for that.”

Cathal stayed at the top city eatery as sous chef for about a year:

“It was brilliant,” he says. “It was just around the time that Ox had opened and it was a great experience. It was a really great atmosphere and very interesting to be able to work with Stephen [Toman]. It was a different style of food to what I’d been used to but it was very interesting.”

It was Niall McKenna and James Street South which eventually took Cathal away from Ox. He took a position with the acclaimed city centre venue after about a year at OX and spent the next 18 months there before the head chef’s position came up at sister restaurant, Hadski’s in Donegall Street, six months ago.

“The idea in my head for Hadski’s is to create a kind of neighbourhood restaurant,” Cathal told LCN. “We have a broad ranging menu in here, you can have a burger, we have a couple of steaks, but we also have more restaurant-type dishes as well. We cater for what we think our customers want. If it’s just a burger and pint, that’s fine, but you can also opt for three courses with wine.

“The main thing that I have noticed since I came back to Northern Ireland is the quality of the ingredients and the produce that we have. We try to use as much local produce as we can but still bring in influences from around the Continent, stuff I’ve picked up on my travels. It’s one of the ways that we try to set ourselves apart.”

When it comes to picking out the hardest element of his job at Hadski’s, Cathal says that for many head chefs, organising and managing the team can be the biggest challenge:

“It’s really a deadline-driven atmosphere and getting lots of other people to work together as a team can be a bit of a task,” he admits.

And while Cathal also believes that the quality of restaurants in Northern Ireland is getting better every year – a trend he ascribes to “certain people taking risks and going out on their own” – he also feels that the “general standard among young chefs is slipping a little”. That’s part of the motivation behind James Street South’s acclaimed apprenticeship programme.

“There is a shortage of well-trained and skilled chefs, but to be perfectly honest about it, a lot of young guys are coming in with an expectation that is well on from where their skill levels would be,” he adds. “I’ve built a strong team here at Hadski’s, five or six young guys who are really into what we’re doing here and one of my main concerns now is making sure that we hang on to them.”

Cathal says that while he is very happy in his current post, he doesn’t see Hadski’s as his last head chef’s position:

“I would like to take a restaurant on from opening and build it up, put my own mark on it,” he says. “Hadski’s was already very successful when I started here. It would be nice to be given a blank canvas to put my own signature on.

“But Niall is great to work for and I don’t think that the restaurant scene here would be where it is now without him. He is definitely a role model for a lot of other chefs out there.”