How did the golden boy of the boom lose his home?
Ronan Ryan seemed to have it all – a successful restaurant business, celebrity friends and a glamorous TV star wife, so...
‘For seven years we’ve agreed to sell the house’
ON ANY given night throughout Ronan Ryan’s six-year reign at the now legendary Town Bar & Grill, you were pretty much guaranteed to spot someone at least fairly famous or fabulously wealthy.
In the corner might be Bono and The Edge, who once brought Bruce Springsteen there for supper after one of his gigs.
On another of the dark-grey banquettes might sit a clatter of politicians, scheming and plotting in a dimly-lit alcove, confident that their conversation could not be overheard. Former Tánaiste and Health Minister Mary Harney was said to be a regular.
It’s where model and Xposé presenter Glenda Gilson would meet her former close friend, the hirsute developer Johnny Ronan, for late-night dinners.
The late DJ Tony Fenton always got the same table, where he would entertain pals like The Corrs or impressionist Mario Rosenstock into the wee small hours. His friend Gerry Ryan had a meal there the night before he was found dead in April 2010.
Louis Walsh was a huge fan and brought showbiz friends from London there to dine, while celebrity chef Jamie Oliver once said it was his favourite restaurant in Dublin.
Pop star Christina Aguilera celebrated her wedding anniversary there with her now ex-husband Jordan Bratman in 2006.
There was also a lesser wellknown clientele, property developers and businessmen who thought nothing of ordering the most expensive wine on the list.
Indeed Ryan once recounted how two Californian billionaires came in for lunch one day shortly after he opened and spent €10,000 alone on wine — one of the bottles cost €3,300. ‘They had a glass at most of each bottle,’ Ryan recalled, ‘and left the rest.’ It was that kind of place. From the moment Ryan opened the doors to Town, as it became simply known, on Kildare Street in the heart of Dublin 2, it seemed destined for greatness. It was late 2004 and, still in his early 30s, Ryan was already one of the city’s most popular front-of-house managers since running the Mermaid Cafe and Il Primo.
A trained chef, with stints in London, New York and Italian kitchens under his belt, he proved to be a gregarious and accomplished restaurateur. Of course it helped that Ireland was in the middle of a financial boom, the likes of which had never been seen before in this country.
Town came along at the perfect time — a dimly-lit, converted cellar with a tasteful mixture of exposed brick and whitewashed walls, it was full of discreet nooks and crannies, where the elite could dine without fear of being overheard or ogled too much.
Within two years, it’s been reported, the restaurant was pulling in more than €2.8 million annually. By anyone’s standards, Ryan — who was in partnership with chef Temple Garner who he met while working at Il Primo — was flying high.
It was a long way from the days of when the Tipperary man, who left school after his Inter Cert, started training as a chef in Galway. Back then he earned just £22 (€28) a week — £14 (€17.77) would be spent on a bus ticket back to his home in Thurles.
Little wonder that by 2005 he was ready to make another major investment — buying a house.
This week Ryan told how he bought a four-bedroom, semidetached, red-brick house in Clontarf, an upmarket suburb on Dublin’s northside, for more than €900,000. He also explained, in an interview with the Irish Independent newspaper, that his mortgage was combined with other borrowings from Bank of Scotland, bringing it up to a total of €1.1million, on which the house was secured.
It was a lot of money for a single man to pay for a house, but let’s not forget, this was at the very height of the property boom.
It’s believed the sale was fully finalised in 2006. A short walk from the seafront, on leafy Mount Prospect Avenue, the house was an impressive bachelor pad. At 1,450sq ft, it had undergone something of a transformation in 2005 when it was renovated and given a two-storey extension, overseen by acclaimed architects, De Blacam and Meagher.
Back in the city centre, business was continuing to boom for Ryan and his chef partner. In 2007, they decided to open two new premises, first the Bridge Bar & Grill in the docklands, followed by South Bar & Grill in Sandyford.
By the time he met former Miss Ireland and TV star Pamela Flood at a mutual friend’s wedding in the south of France in June 2008, Ryan was at the peak of his career — a successful, hard-working and charismatic restaurateur, who counted many of his celebrity regulars as personal friends. His relationship with a former beauty queen seemed like a natural next step for the then 38-year-old.
His life, many must have thought, was charmed. Fastforward a decade, however, and things have changed quite dramatically for Ryan and his nowwife, Pamela.
This week it was revealed they are on the cusp of losing that beloved family home.
In a case that came before the Circuit Civil Court on Wednesday, Judge Jacqueline Linnane told how Ryan has not paid anything off his €1.1million mortgage for more than eight years.
While Pamela was not named on Ryan’s 2006 mortgage with Bank of Scotland and is not a defendant in the case, she was joined as a Notice Party to the repossession proceedings relating to a family home because she married Ryan in 2014.
An American-owned, so-called ‘vulture fund’ called Tanager has taken the case against the couple. The company bought more than 2,000 distressed home loans almost ten years ago from Bank of Scotland.
The court heard how the bank granted Ryan a 34-year mortgage of €1,105,000 to be paid back in monthly instalments of €4,434. But the last payment made by Ryan was in August 2010. The loan has now fallen into arrears totalling €281,111 and the total debt outstanding was stated to be €1,207,904.
Documents seen by the Irish Daily Mail show the mortgage was transferred from Bank of Scotland to Tanager in 2014.
The court case was adjourned on Wednesday to allow consideration of legal submissions on behalf of both parties. And while neither Ryan nor Pamela Flood were present on Wednesday, Ryan did speak out about the proceedings the following day.
In that interview with the Irish Independent, he told how he already agreed to sell the house several times, as part of repossession attempts by previous owners of the loan. But each time, deals had fallen through. ‘The loan has changed hands three times... we never fought it, we always agreed to sell,’ he said. ‘For seven years, we’ve never stopped agreeing to sell the house. I played ball the whole away along, we’ll be gone out of that house before spring is over.’
Indeed a Google check shows that the house was on the market in June 2012 with an asking price of €650,000. By September 2013, it was on again, this time for the reduced price of €630,000.
Ryan also told of his fears of being pursued by Tanager if it did not get back all the money it was owed by selling the house.
Regardless of the reasons behind Ryan making no repayments on his mortgage for the guts of a decade, it is a horrendous situation for any family to find themselves in. Ryan and his wife have four children between them — Zach, 17, Ryan’s son from his first marriage, and the three kids they have had together: Harrison, 7, Elsie, 5, and three-yearold Gracie.
So what happened in those intervening years? From when Ryan was the golden boy of the Irish restaurant scene, to now fearing the relentless pursuit of a vulture fund.
Well, it would seem that the summer when he met Pamela also marked the turn in his good fortunes — career-wise at least. Quite simply, Ireland spiralled into recession and spending on dinners out in restaurants plummeted almost overnight.
There had already been damaging delays surrounding the opening of Ryan’s new South venture in Sandyford. So by the time they did start serving meals, they were on the back foot.
‘Town was doing well and Bridge was breaking even, but we were in over our heads with South,’ Ryan has previously explained. ‘We needed to take in €60,000 per week to make it work, but were only pulling in about €50,000. We were taking €10,000 from Town every week and putting it into Sandyford just to break even. So when the recession kicked in and Town went down by 10 or 15 per cent, everything snapped and South pulled the others over the cliff.’
Ryan, however, was quick to admit his own failings in how his businesses worked out. ‘I’d love to blame the economy, Anglo or everyone else,’ he said. ‘But I can only blame myself.’
By December 2008, South had closed it doors with debts of €1.35million and a few months later Ryan pulled out of Bridge Bar & Grill. In June 2009, Town went into examinership. It was an already very public fall from grace, not helped when irate suppliers rang into RTÉ’s Liveline radio show to complain Ryan had failed to pay huge bills for things like cheese, wine, glassware and cleaning products.
For the next two years he continued to manage the restaurant on behalf of Treasury Holdings,
owned by developers Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett, who invested €500,000 into the business to keep it going.
And Ryan, to his credit, did a stellar job of steering Town through some tough years. Certainly the stars kept coming — director Neil Jordan, Irish football captain Robbie Keane, Gerry Ryan’s widow Morah and broadcaster Eamon Dunphy all were regularly spotted at the restaurant.
Town was put up for sale in 2011 but Ryan, despite having secured finance, failed in his bid to buy the place back. It was sold instead to Johnny Ronan’s sister Gillian, who ran it until a couple of years ago.
Ryan has admitted to being devastated at the time, he certainly felt it was time to finally move on.
After leaving Town there was a four month stint at La Stampa restaurant, then in April 2012 he helped set up Bite Restaurant on Frederick Street. He had left there by the following September.
By December 2013, it emerged he was about to help launch yet another new venture, in a funny twist of fate at the same premises where he once owned Bridge Bar & Grill down in this docklands. This time it was an Italian, Pizza e Porchetta, with partners Mark O’Brien and Dave Kelleher.
By all accounts this business went well for him — he certainly credits his time there as helping to rebuild his confidence. Indeed, he felt up for the challenge of setting up another new restaurant in the summer of 2015, Counter Culture on the top floor of the Powerscourt Townhouse.
This time Pamela was on board to help. She has also spoken about how her own TV career had stalled at this point.
The couple by now had married in August 2014 in 10 Ormond Quay in Dublin and had two children. Pamela, always described as being refreshingly down-to-earth, bought her wedding dress off the rack from Coast. Guests included former RTÉ colleagues and Town regulars — Gráinne and Síle Seoige, Morah Ryan, Andrea Corr, Caroline Morahan, Lorraine Keane and Guggi.
Their third child together, Gracie, was born in December 2015. Since then, Counter Culture has moved to a premises on Mercier Street and Ryan and Flood have branched out into the outdoor and office catering business. According to company records, Ryan resigned as Director of Counter Culture Ltd in 2016. Pamela, however, is still listed as the company secretary.
It would seem, from his comments this week about fearing the actions of the American vulture fund, that Ryan is once again at something of a crossroads in his life. But he has faced huge adversity before and he has always been upfront about taking the blame for when things have gone wrong.
Certainly, there is no one else he can point the finger at for not paying his mortgage for eight years.
But like a lot of businessmen, he seems to take it all in his stride. And when people have complimented him on his ‘carry-on’ attitude, he has pointed out that he has had no choice.
‘It’s just life,’ he explained a couple of years ago. ‘People say: “Well done,” and I’m like: “What are you going to do? Starve?” No, you’re going to feed your family, and it’s cyclical. Standing back, you can see this.
‘You have no experience of it, so you just ride it out.’
‘There is no one else he can point the finger at’