Divorced and bust but my final humiliation was handing back €82 of groceries at the Tesco till
Nick Munier was one of Dublin’s most celebrated restaurateurs. Then came a divorce and financial ruin. The former Masterchef dishes out his harrowing story...
WARREN Buffet famously said: ‘Honesty is an expensive gift, don’t expect it from cheap people.’ As Nick Munier sits back in his banquette at the Waterfront bistro in sunny Glasthule, Co. Dublin, these words have never rung truer. The oncedapper Munier, famous for his bespoke suits and bespectacled front-of-house garb, looks gaunt and almost shabby. He wears a thick salt-and-pepper beard that hides the wrinkles and strain that losing a marriage and two businesses in five years have etched on his face.
The facial hair is to remind him of naive decisions and lessons learned as, at 50, he once again readies himself to take on the world. The onetime maître d’ for Marco Pierre White sips a double espresso and recounts a tale which is now oh-sofamiliar in post-recession Ireland.
‘In a way, what happened to me was I trusted the wrong person,’ he says. ‘I can’t sit here and say there is someone else to blame because I made the decision to go there. I didn’t do my homework on the location. It came up and I viewed it, I got excited and thought to myself that I could make it anywhere, much to my disillusionment.’
The location he speaks of is the now boarded-up three-storey building that was home to Avenue, Nick’s
‘I can’t sit here and say there’s someone else to blame. I went there’
one-stop dream location. While going through a divorce with his then wife, Denise McBride, he agreed to sell his share in Pichet, the restaurant he set up with head chef Stephen Gibson. And in a haze of ambition and bravado, he took his life savings and jumped into bed with the first offer he was presented with. That, in hindsight, was probably his biggest mistake.
‘I had left the restaurant [Pichet] and sold my shares. I took a week off and suddenly this opportunity arose on Crow Street and I kind of panicked. When you walked inside it was huge – like a Tardis – 8,000 square feet. I am creative and I just saw the potential.
‘I had something to prove and I thought I could do it regardless. I signed the lease with a €47,000 deposit, three months’ rent up-front, and didn’t think of the consequences. Ambition took hold of me. I designed everything and then Alanna Feeney, who was then working as a consultant, helped me with the marketing.
‘They managed to create this hype on social media which was phenomenal. We had 6,000 followers in a month or two and we had to deliver. Then we did a fancy opening party and the ground floor wasn’t even finished. It was all hands on deck because we had to get it open. I didn’t think about it logically.’
While ambition and elbow grease can give a dining room a polished look, Avenue’s crippling disadvantage was with a complete lack of footfall. Tucked away in a side street in Temple Bar, the restaurant lay undiscovered by the thousands of tourists pounding by every day. Nick decided to up the ante by converting the upstairs into a live music venue and booked acts like Sharon Shannon to play as part of supper clubs on Valentine’s Day.
‘It was a place where you can come in and choose where you want to go, have dinner a drink or listen to a cabaret or a band, and I wanted it at once. I then discovered the expense of putting a live band on upstairs. Because you pay up-front, and you are left with the ticket sales and promoting to get people in, you have to rent state-of-the-art equipment because no band in their right mind is going to play with a lesser sound system.
‘But I didn’t care. It was an amazing feeling to get it up and running. We fell down because not enough people bought tickets to shows. But the ground-floor restaurant was working really well and then my chef walked out. That was a real kick in the teeth. They then managed to get Dave Ryan to come on board, and he was this great young enthusiastic chef but, at that stage, I was forced to change the concept of the restaurant.
‘I used to do consultancy and the first rule you would pass on was never change direction. You have one chance to make an impression. But all the caveats I advised people of I ignored myself and f **** d it up completely.’
As a result, Nick was forced to leave front of house, put on chef’s whites and start cooking. Unfortunately punters were paying money to have him serve the food and not cook it.
‘It was never my idea to go into the kitchen and cook; it was out of necessity. Nobody would help me, so Alanna told me to get my arse in the kitchen because it is my restaurant and nobody else cares about it.
‘So I did. Then I had a backlash because people were giving out that I wasn’t a chef. I had to do what I had to do to get by. The bookings were coming in thick and fast and the reviews from the public were great. The critics weren’t that good but the public was happy and I didn’t care. We had corporate bookings from Emirates Airlines, the National Treasury and we seemed like we were flying.’
Despite all these hurdles, Nick started to turn a corner until one day he got a call from his accountant that put the kibosh on his business. A substantial pile of cash had been ‘misplaced’ by a member of staff, leaving Nick with no alternative but to shut up shop. The bailiffs arrived, the inventory was liquidated, and the proprietor, who was living upstairs, was left homeless.
‘I found out that people were stealing from me, slowly for over a year, and that was the end of us. Just when we thought we were doing well, suddenly you realise that money was going left, right and centre. We went to the gardaí about it and it is currently under investigation and the file is with the DPP. It made me feel terrible because this was the end of my dream.
‘I used all my own money; stupidly I had put all my life savings into the business. On paper we had an amazing year, but in the bank account it was dwindling. So, in order to keep the thing going, I had to sell two apartments I had left in the UK and cashed in my pension to keep the dream alive.
‘We were employing 20 staff at that stage and I had to throw in the towel. The only saving grace for me
was that we paid all the staff up to date. [Closing] was the hardest decision I had to make and then I realised that I was spent. I was a wreck, I had two abscesses in my mouth and I had to get teeth pulled, I lost weight and stopped eating.
‘I was living on alcohol, coffee and cigarettes. I felt a failure. I feel angry that someone I trusted in the business could abuse my trust. This was my legacy for my children and it is gone now. Everything I did was for my boys and I wanted them to eventually come into the business and for them to feel part of something, and for [a while] they did and it was amazing.
‘The reality is I listened to the wrong people because when I came out of the divorce [from Denise McBrien] and then leaving Pichet, I was in a bad emotional space.’
Nick pauses for a second and rubs his eyes. Just speaking about his woes dredges up feelings of pain and anger. Thousands of people went bust during the Tiger collapse, but Nick’s collapse was intensified by his celebrity. The only reason he is doing this interview is to set the record straight.
‘I went to a cash machine and I had only €5 left and that is horrific. If I had to think of all the bad things that happened to me, I would be in a strait jacket. I remember going to Tesco’s and buying groceries of €82 and I had no money in the bank. The card was refused and I had to walk out of Dundrum having handed it all back. It was humiliating because I have been on TV, and all the people know me and are looking at me. They forget that I am a human being as well and that I can be low and down on my luck.
‘So I have shied away from the celebrity culture and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this interview. But there were a lot of rumours going around. I know what is real now and hitting rock bottom makes you realise that the only way is up again.’
Nick breaks into a smile now and laughs, saying that only by joking about his misfortune that he can move on from it. While he refuses to let his failures eat him up, he admits that he is still disappointed at the amount of people who shunned him the moment his business imploded. However, from the darkness an act of kindness by his friend and marketing manager Alanna Feeney blossomed into romance.
‘People who knew me when I was doing well didn’t want anything to do with me when the restaurant closed. I could tell you on one hand those people who rang me to say sorry or to ask if I needed help.
‘I became anti-social and retreated into myself. I did everything the right way on paper as a director and we sold the assets. Yes, there were suppliers who were burned, but we did speak to every one of them over a period about payment plans so they weren’t left high and dry.
‘These horrible phone calls to suppliers and the only person who helped me through this – and is my rock – was Alanna. I was homeless when the restaurant closed and that was scary. I had two weeks to leave and the only option I had was to go and live with Alanna in her front room. That was never our intention or plan, and what saved me was the art on the wall was in my name – so they couldn’t take it.
‘I sold that at auction and I got €4,000 to get back on my feet. I couldn’t sign on because I was a director and I suffered a lot of consequences. I survived on that and managed to get a job. I cannot thank that woman more because I had nobody. I had my parents but they weren’t in the same country.
‘That woman could have easily walked away because the s**t hit the fan. She stood by me; just listening was a lifeline. All I can say is kudos to this woman. She was going through her own difficulties, we are together and it is in infancy. But I can’t thank her enough.’ It is impossible not to feel some semblance of pity for Nick. Underneath the manic creativity and the quick, trusting nature is a good heart. He has just returned from his astrologer where good news was predicted in the stars for him in 2018. He is a glass-is-half-full person and does not require pity.
‘I could either go into a hole and drink and feel sorry for myself and fall apart. I was very lucky that restaurant owner and business tycoon Michael Wright gave me a leg-up. He brought me on board and started me at work in the Anglers Wrest in Lucan and I was back working again. I was my own worst enemy because in my head there was this shame that I had lost these two restaurants and I was broke and a restaurant manager. But you do what you have to do.
‘Rather than sit at home and think that nobody likes me, you have to accept that nobody gives a s**t and that they have their own problems. In the end I lost my business but nobody died. I can’t live with these regrets and I have to move on.
‘I lost all my confidence and I get this anxiety attack even talking to you, because I don’t feel worthy enough to be among people talking about business because I failed. I haven’t got a pot to p**s in. I owe the taxman money, but I have to get on with it. Working for Michael Wright has allowed me to find my confidence again and realise that I have strengths and a value again.
‘I am 50 now and I only have 30 years left. Are you going to have the same amount of motivation and stamina and energy when you are 80? I am 50 and starting from scratch. I feel like I am 18 again but I have great energy.
‘I may not have any money, but I am healthy, I have the love of a good woman, great children who are healthy, and that makes it easy to get on. It is up to me to feel good. I can be angry and negative with the world but what will that achieve?
‘I lost it all and I have the taxman on my back, but I am still working.’
‘I was living on alcohol, coffee and cigarettes. I felt a failure’