Cover Story Neven & Amelda Maguire
Neven Maguire may be one of the best- known chefs in the country but the man from Cavan argues that he owes it all to the women in his life. Donal O’Donoghue gets his story
Neven Maguire is one of the most popular chefs in the country, and the man from Cavan owes it all to the many women in his life, he tells Donal O’Donoghue
“God yes, there are a lot of women in my life,” says chef, author and TV star Neven Maguire, as if the realisation has just hit him. I’ve just rattled off the list of significant females, from his late and dearly beloved mother, Vera, and his wife Amelda, to his daughter, six-year-old Lucia (a twin to Connor) and his four sisters, his mother-in-law, his business manager, his head chef, his restaurant manager and Claire who runs the cookery school. Of the 14 chefs in the kitchen of MacNean House restaurant, 10 are female, a statistic, he says, that is more accident than design. But if behind every good man there’s a good woman, there is a legion behind the hard-working Maguire. In many ways, he needs them.
It’s a grey day at Dublin Zoo. The lights of Christmas are fading but the zoo is still electric with surprises. Maguire, just back from a family holiday in Portugal, is visiting the Phoenix Park with Amelda and their twins, Lucia and Connor, to see the Wild Lights menagerie. With MacNean House in Blacklion undergoing major refurbishment before reopening on February 1, Maguire is on his holiday, or as much as he can be. In truth, he finds it difficult to stand still even as he protests that right now, his life is all about
We clicked immediately and for our first date we visited the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare
“more family time”. His latest TV series Neven’s Irish Seafood Trails started this month, he starts filming his next food travel series in Spain in March and before that, come umpteen demos and engagements. “It’s all about making the most from life and enjoying it,” he says.
Neven is a man who can’t say no, instilled with a work ethic he learned first-hand when his parents ran MacNean House through the Troubles, when some 60 police officers were stationed in the small border town of Blacklion. The restaurant was bombed twice, closed for a number of years and his parents considered relocating more than once. But they endured and MacNean House was resurrected and revived with Neven at the helm. Today, it is a flourishing business with weekend bookings into June 2020 and while Maguire has voiced his anxieties about Brexit, it has yet to make an impact. Meanwhile, it seems like the chef is everywhere: on radio, on TV, in print and in person with cookery demonstrations, school visits as the country’s first Home Economics ambassador and charity work.
Such endeavour has its downsides. Recently, his doctor advised him that he needed to need lose weight and while he jokes about it, I suspect it is a concern for the 44-year-old with a seriously sweet tooth. “I need to listen to my doctor,” he says, as we talk of New Year resolutions. “For me, it’s the same old broken record of trying to lose weight and stay fit and healthy. You need consistency with the training and the diet and that is something I struggle with, but I do believe that I’m getting there.” Over the years he has hired a personal trainer, installed a gym in his home and pledged to ease back on the chocolate truffles. But perhaps the crucial factor is his family: Amelda as his motivator and the twins as his motivation.
What makes Maguire tick is probably as much a mystery to him as anyone else. Crucially, perhaps, he always knew what he wanted, the first boy in his school to study home economics at a time when it was neither popular nor profitable and while he downplays the name calling of those years, it must have hurt. Yet this affable, seemingly happy-go-lucky man is tougher than he seems and deadly serious about his passion for food and cooking. Unlike other chefs such as Jamie Oliver or Gordon Ramsay, there is no chain of branded Neven Maguire restaurants, just MacNean House. As much as possible, the Cavan man wants to be hands on and is always anxious of spreading himself too thin.
The original female influence, the woman at whose apron strings he learned his love of all things culinary, is his late mother, Vera, who died in 2012 from lung cancer. “Mum knew from the age of 12 that I wanted to be a chef, that I knew it would be my career and my life. She set a great example with the hours she worked herself in the restaurant. She was an incredible hard-working woman who gave me such great advice down the years. When I left school after my Junior Cert, she advised me to go to Fermanagh College. She never said that I had to do my Inter Cert and Leaving Cert. She knew what I wanted and supported and guided me all the way.” Maguire was at Fermanagh College in Enniskillen for a decade as both student and tutor. In that time, he also worked in a number of prestige kitchens, including Paul Rankin’s Roscoff in Belfast, the Grand Hotel in Berlin and with Léa Linster in Luxembourg. All the while, his mother’s advice and love kept him going. “When I was working in Germany I was very lonely and lost but Mum was such a great support then and always. Following her diagnosis with lung cancer she tried to give up the cigarettes
When I meet my Mum again I will thank her for all the love she gave me
The first time I ever saw Lucia and Connor was an amazing moment that will stay with me for the rest of my days
and that too was sad because she did enjoy her smoke. But she didn’t want any of us smoking and quite a few of us did give up following her illness and passing.”
A photograph of Neven Maguire hangs in St James’s Hospital in Dublin in recognition of his work with Target Lung Cancer (he is the charity’s ambassador). “I asked my family was it OK to do it and they all agreed that I should in memory of Mum,” he says. James’s Hospital is also where his father, Joe, died in October 2001, following a tragic accident. “A er Dad died, Mum said that she was happy that one day she would be back in his arms again. at was nice for us to hear. I too hope that I will see my mother again and we will have a big cooking competition when we do. I am a Catholic. I believe in my religion and believe it’s good to have something like that in my life. When I meet my Mum again I will thank her for all the love she gave me.”
Vera and Amelda got on like a house on re from the moment they rst met. “In many ways, Amelda is very like my mother,” says Neven. “ ey say that sometimes your son goes for someone like their mum and maybe there was a little truth in that.” Neven rst spotted Amelda in Enniskillen (she is from Co Fermanagh) before they met again in Galway. “I had just come back from Lyon where I had represented Ireland in the Bocuse d’Or in 2001 and we met at a nightclub in Galway called CPs. We clicked immediately and for our rst date we visited the Cli s of Moher. Our rst meal was at Bang Café in Dublin. Now I always joke that I shop locally for food and for love.” e couple’s twins, Connor and Lucia, were born in 2012. It was a complicated birth and a erwards, Amelda developed cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal condition. She recovered fully but the couple decided not to have any more children. “ e rst time I ever saw Lucia and Connor was an amazing moment that will stay with me for the rest of my days,” says Neven. “I didn’t realise how ill Amelda was until the moment the doctor sat me down and told me that my wife was seriously unwell. So I asked then what can I do. e twins stayed in there until Amelda was able to come home and when we got home it was so quiet and calm, just the four of us.”
His children are the light of his life. “Lucia is very artistic and loves picking her own clothes. She knows exactly what she likes and has a heart of gold. If I ever cut my nger she is there with a plaster. She also has a sweet tooth like me. She and Connor will be seven in February and are big into all kinds of activities.”
It is a hectic house that is held together in many ways by Neven’s motherin-law, the redoubtable Eileen. “She is like a mother to me, a rock and a diamond,” he says. “She is someone who never puts herself rst. She doesn’t go on any big fancy holidays like Amelda and me and the twins. Like my mother, Eileen has a great head on her shoulders and they are so similar in so many ways. She is the real boss in the house.”
At work too, it is a case of women running and sometimes ruling the roost and the rooster. “We never set out to have a majority female kitchen,” he says. “My head chef Carmel (McGirr) has been with me nearly 14 years, Bláithín (McCabe), our restaurant manager and sommelier, has been there the same length of time. ey are my two key people in the restaurant and kitchen. en there is Claire (Beasley) who runs the cookery school and manages the TV work and all the cookery books. I do believe that women bring talent, calmness and so much ability.” en there is Andrea Doherty, his o ce manager. “She is my guardian angel,” says Neven. “She manages my diary, so while I can’t say no to anyone, Andrea can and does. I won’t say yes or no unless Andrea has agreed to it and then plans it into the schedule.”
A couple of years back, I mentioned the ‘r’ (retirement) word to Neven Maguire and he looked at me as if I was having a laugh. In less than two months he is bound for Galicia to lm the next TV cookery series. Until then, he will continue to motor up and down the country doing cookery demonstrations, overseeing his award-winning cookery school (Best Cookery School 2018 as awarded by the RAI) and getting ready for the reopening of the refurbished restaurant. e only concession he will make to taking it easy is that there will be no book this year, following last autumn’s best-selling Home Economics for Life. “But I will not be twiddling my thumbs,” he says. More than ever, however, I suspect he needs the women in his life to keep body and soul and business together.