The spice of life
Twenty-nine-year-old Stephen Forbes – currently head chef at Derry’s only dedicated seafood restaurant, Pier 59 – fell into his kitchen career almost by accident.
As a teenager, Stephen Forbes hadn’t been sure what he wanted to do once he’d left school and when attempts to secure a place in the joinery class at the North-West Regional College came to nothing, he opted to study catering instead.
For Derry-born Stephen, it was the start of a remarkably varied cheffing career and one that would be interrupted on more than one occasion.
Following his stint on work experience at Fitzroy’s Bistro on Bridge Street in the city, he spent a couple of years getting to know the trade at the former Fort Inn in Derry’s Craft Village before leaving the hospitality sector altogether to pursue hopes of a career in music production.
A couple of years later, however, Stephen was back in the kitchen, this time just over the border at the Castle Inn in Greencastle, where he worked alongside Kevin Pyke, another Derry chef who’s now well known for blazing a trail with gourmet street food in the city.
After an extended period spent travelling around the world, Stephen returned to a new post at the Railway Tavern in Fahan, then he spent 18 months as a chef de partie at the four-star Rathmullan House in Donegal. It was during his time at this prestigious venue, says Stephen, that he learned most about his chosen profession.
Following a stint at Café del Mondo in Derry, Stephen became head chef at Una Kincaid’s Pier 59 restaurant in Spencer Road at the end of last year.
Pier 59 does a little chicken and beef in order to cater for everyone’s tastes, but it’s primarily a seafood eatery and although it’s been open for less than a year, it’s caused quite a stir on the city’s fledgling restaurant scene:
“I wouldn’t describe what we do here as fine dining, this is good wholesome food beautifully presented and we try to be as original as we can,” says Stephen, who uses his experience of cooking around the world to add a little spice to Pier 59’s menu:
“Our food really has an Asian twist,” he adds. “When I was travelling, I visited lots of places including Cambodia, India, Thailand and Vietnam and I’ve been taking my experience from those trips and everything that I learned and putting it into the menus here. The result is something really different and exciting using ingredients that you really won’t find in other restaurants in the area.”
Stephen says that he thinks the standard in restaurants all over Derry is improving every year, particularly so in the last five or six:
“People know a lot more about food nowadays, they’re travelling more, they’re reading about food and they’re watching it on TV,” he says. “When they come to us, they know about the food that they’re ordering so it’s important that we strive to keep things fresh for them. You have to keep ahead of the game.”
Stephen says that his priority now is to continue developing the offering at Pier 59:
“We’re having a lot of fun with it and it’s challenging,” he says. “You don’t know what to expect and the menu changes every day depending on the fish we’re able to get.
“I’ve been here for about eight months now, but I don’t think that I want to be working in the kitchen for the rest of my life and like many chefs, I’d also like to have my own place. I think it’s important in this job to just take a step back at some time and look at where everything’s going. But I couldn’t be happier in the job that I’m in at present.”
