Chef David Oulton- Let me Introduce Myself

Hi. Let me introduce myself. My name is David Oulton and I have been The Executive Chef of The Great National Abbey Court Hotel and Trinity Leisure Spa for the best part of 10 years. I've never written a Blog before so anyone out there reading this and wants to ask me questions please feel free to email me. chef@abbeycourt.ie usually gets the job done.

First, a little history about myself. I was born in Manchester and have lived all over the world including Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Nepal, St Lucia, Barbados, The U.S., France, the UK., and now Ireland. I was educated in the Kenya, UK and the U.S. When I first came to Ireland it was to take over the position of Executive Sous Chef at City West Hotel in Dublin. I have been a chef on and off for nearly 36 years.

I took over my present position in The Abbey Court during the last wheezy gasps of The Celtic Tiger when, I have to say, the outlook for the hotel was tremendous. Little did we realise then what was in store for us only a short year later. The adjustments that had to be made during the recession/depression were very difficult and I am proud to say that we would be one of the very few, privately run hotels in the country that made it through the financial meltdown without going into receivership or examinership, nor were we sold to some group that would not have cared whether we made it or not.

During the last 10 years I reckon myself and my team have done the best part of 500 weddings and it would not be hard to admit that without these weddings we would never have made it. Not only that but the average output per year of the kitchen still amounts to about €1.6m per year and I am still just as passionate about what we produce today, if not more so, than the day I arrived.

What we serve today has also dramatically changed since I took over. It was always, for example, not only in my remit, but also my goal, to be able to serve better than good quality restaurant food at a wedding. That this food was served well presented and piping hot was a given but more importantly it was all made of the best quality ingredients available for the price point at which we sit in the market. I would like to hope that we have achieved this but that also we go from strength to strength. We are forever tinkering with our “systems” to make sure that the standards of the industry are not only met but in all cases exceeded.

Other areas of the operation have changed dramatically as well. When I first arrived we had two restaurants. The Cloister, which was very fine dining and I recall your full dinner was about €55 at that time. We also had “The Abbott’s Bistro” where there was a more casual dining experience. In 2011 we merged both restaurants into what is now known as The Abbott’s Steak House. Four years later the place is now going gang busters and is finally attracting a good deal of local trade as well as feeding the people who are staying in the hotel.

In November 2013 the decision was made to close the Carvery. This was a hard decision to make as the place had become something of an institution over the time that it had been open. Apart from my colleagues thinking I'd lost the plot I think most of our regulars thought I'd gone totally insane as well. In hindsight I think it was one of the best things that we have ever done. There isn't a chef in the world that wants to stand behind food and serve it that, best case scenario, was cooked 2 hours ago. There was just no way to get any presentation and quality in the food. Eating a piece of fish for lunch that was cooked 2-3 hours ago is not my idea of even a decent dining experience. Furthermore we also had pressure on labour cost at the time, and then, to add a third element into this equation, the main kitchen is situated at the other end of the building from the service point. Given all these factors I became deeply disillusioned and unimpressed with what we were serving. The Carvery is no more. The quality, presentation and freshness of the food has increased enormously and if our write-ups on trip advisor are any indication of how we are doing then I would have to say we have achieved 80% of what we set out to do. There are always going to be two camps here. Those who like the good old fashioned Carvery and those who wouldn’t step through the door. Again, in hindsight, we did lose customers in the early days but we replaced them with people who wanted something different and I know that my colleagues no longer want to lynch me and, hopefully, the customers don't either. I still walk into the lunch seating area all the time and I still notice plenty of familiar faces from when The Carvery was open. I guess some of them came back.

I am about to start my 10th year in the hotel and I look forward to going in there and working more and more. I am very privileged to have been bought a ticket to the international chef’s symposium that is happening this October. This event is called “Food on the Edge.” foodontheedge.ie will get you to the site. Check out the guest speakers list and be very, very jealous that I get to go and meet these people. The event, oddly enough, is not really about cooking, it's about how we cook things, where do the food stuffs that we cook from come from, how many air miles are on them, could we be using a product locally sourced and most importantly is it feasibly sustainable to continue to buy and serve it in our establishments. It is also billed as a “once in history” event in that to assemble this amount of the planets chefs in one place for two days, at one time, is only going to work with a mastermind such as JP McMahon at the helm. Fair play that man!! The fact that some of these chefs are coming to Ireland is also a great nod to what a lot of us chefs are trying to accomplish here in Ireland and that this has become internationally recognised.

That symposium is only one of the things that I'm looking forward to in the near future as I am now taking an online course at Harvard University on cooking and science and let me tell you I never even realised how little I knew about cooking. Sure I can cook, wouldn't have my job if I couldn't! But it goes so much deeper than that. I learnt to cook because that's what the person teaching me said I had to do, and, that was the way it was always done since Escoffier was a commis if applicable. It's not until you start to question why things happen that you realise that you know almost nothing about cooking. Bottom line, at 53 years old, I have to go back to school and start all over again!

I am determined to update this Blog as often as my schedule permits and if I fall behind please feel free to prod me,……see email address above, and also, don't be afraid to ask questions.

How do you sign off a Blog? Well, “until next time” should get it done