Up and up for Magherafelt’s Roly

Up and up for Magherafelt’s Roly

Magherafelt chef, Roly Graham (37), is celebrating this month after being named as a regional winner in the recent Irish Restaurant Awards.

Roly Graham took the title of Best Chef for County Derry at the Ulster finals recently, held in the Guildhall, Londonderry. More than 500 restaurant owners and their staff celebrated their hard work and achievement at the event.

For Roly – owner and head chef at Church Street Restaurant in Magherafelt – it’s another high point in a career that’s seen him don his whites in kitchens around the world.

Originally from Belfast, Roly developed an interest in catering during his early teens when he helped out in his parents’ restaurant business. Later, he achieved his NVQ level 2 in cooking at Belfast Met and set out to build a culinary career for himself.

He worked in a series of venues around Ireland for a couple of years before taking a position at the then fledgling Belfast restaurant Shu, a job which he feels signals the real start of his career as a chef.

“Stephen Brothers had just taken over the restaurant at the time and he took me under his wing and mentored me,” recalls Roly. “He had just come from Deane’s and he really showed me a lot of new things.”

Roly worked his way up to second chef at Shu before departing for London and a position at Gordon Ramsey’s prestigious Petrus restaurant in Knightsbridge – an opportunity which Roly describes as “an incredible experience”.

From there, he migrated to Australia where he worked as chef de partie for a year in a high-end Sydney restaurant.

“That was a bit of a culture shock, but in a good way,” he tells LCN. “Sydney is a compact enough city, I met a lot of people and the lifestyle is completely different to what you’re used to. It’s a phenomenal place and I loved it, it was a great time for me.”

By the time he had turned 26, he was back in Northern Ireland and serving as head chef at top Belfast hotel, The Merchant. He admits he was “apprehensive” about taking on the responsibility:

“I had good people over me,” he adds. “Tony O’Neill was there at the time and he helped me a lot.”

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After four-and-a-half years at The Merchant, Roly says he “felt the need to get out of Belfast and take a break”, so at 30, he took a post at The Inn in Castledawson. He stayed there for more than two years before finally taking the decision to open his own place in nearby Magherafelt in premises once occupied by Noel McMeel’s acclaimed restaurant, Trompets.

The building in Church Street was an art gallery by the time Roly took it on in 2013, but after some modest investment, he was able to re-open the venue as a restaurant and that same year, he took the title of Restaurateur of the Year at the Janus Awards.

Since then, says Roly, business has continued to improve. The restaurant has been extended onto the second floor of the building and in April, work is set to start on knocking through into the premises next door to create a new lounge and cocktail garden. Described as “a real departure for Magherafelt”, the new lounge will offer Irish tapas-style food and the cocktail area at the rear will be able to accommodate around 50 people in an outdoor environment.

“I think the Chef of the Year title is a great achievement for a small restaurant in Magherafelt,” says Roly. “There are lots of good chefs around this area, but I think we’re very consistent here and we do enjoy a great deal of return trade.”

In September this year, Roly will expand the business again when he opens a new seafood bar called Oscars in nearby Castledawson. That venue will be very casual and open for food all day:

“I felt that Magherafelt was getting a bit full-up with restaurants and Castledawson is only three miles away,” he explains. “We sell a phenomenal amount of fish at Church Street so I really think that the demand is there.”

As for the future, Roly says that he’ll be turning 40 within the next two or three years and at that stage, he would like to be able to step back a little from the kitchen and perhaps, take on more of a supervisory role:

“There are a lot of younger people here with more energy than me that will be able to push this business forward,” he adds. “It takes a lot out of you in the kitchen, it can be a hard slog and there is only so long that you can keep going before you start to fall behind.

“When I think back, I opened this place with six staff, now I have 18, so that’s good for us and it’s good for the economy in this area.”

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