CHAR: Forest Avenue

Photo by George Voronov

John Wyer

Photo by George Voronov

Forest Avenue

Forest Avenue is a contemporary Dublin restaurant serving food with hospitable, charming aplomb. It is owned by Corkonian chef John Wyer and his New Yorker wife Sandy and showcases an individual and confident style of cooking that is its own version of 'Irish' but not in any way confined by the label. It won’t lack appeal to locals either, this place buzzes with diners from Wednesday to Saturday. Both three-course and tastings menus are available for lunch and dinner with and a meticulous, stylish execution.

John’s respect for raw materials comes through in spades, as does his commitment to elegant presentation. We were wowed by a snack of two dainty round potato doughnuts, sitting on a deep, rich mushroom puree. Soft inside with a slightly sweet crispy exterior, a titillating dot of red sherry reduction standing in for jam and a tiny triangle of crispy chicken skin perched on top. Equally delicious were the agnolotti of parmesan and cauliflower; perfect parcels filled with a savoury essence. The food here feels very generous; there’s a lot of care taken. Yet even though intricate, magical processes have been applied to the pure ingredients, nothing is overdone: there’s a masterful simplicity at work. I spoke to John about his passion for ingredients, his style of cooking, and his thoughts on Irish food today.

Ingredients are clearly a huge passion of yours, where does that passion come from?

I’ve been obsessed with ingredients since I first started cooking. I was always like that, even as a teenager. My mother was the same. My fridge was always full of wonderful ingredients. She grew up on a farm. I think that was just the norm for her, to go out the back and pick your carrots and cabbage. A very simple approach. When I started in this trade I was focusing on learning the fundamentals of the craft and then trying to understand where things were coming from. When I came to Dublin it was a case of trying to get to know the farmers and the vegetable growers and trying to find out who was on top of their game when it came to producers of raw materials.

How important are those relationships with your farmers and producers?

Our veg grower is the most important person in this operation. That’s a lady called Jenny McNally from Lusk, North Co. Dublin. I’ve known her for about seven or eight years now. She’s been expanding her farm for the last number of years, finally to a point where she can now sustain this restaurant with vegetables. The thing about Jenny is that she’s trying new things all the time. These cabbages for instance, she was going to throw away because they were really small, and she wasn’t happy with them. I was like, they’re amazing, little baby January King cabbages.

Do you start with vegetables?

Vegetables never let me down. I’ve always loved them. I love the varieties, colours, textures. The scope for veg is amazing. Vegetables change all the time, they reflect the season more. You can get duck or lamb or beef all year round. But in order for you to express the season for me you have to do that through veg. I want the food to reflect where we are. I want it to say we’re in a specific season, time of a season even.

It’s important for me to have the relationship with the veg grower, to have an understanding of the love that she puts into her product. The fact that I know the grower, for a long time, I know her family, that has a feel good factor for me. We have a very clear and defined food chain, a very simple food system. It’s coming from farm in Lusk and the next day it’s on the plate here.

What are your favourite ingredients?

I love humble ingredients, like turnip, swede, potatoes, onions… You don’t see a lot of extravagance on my menu. Those are the things that float my boat. To take a humble swede and turn it into something spectacular. For the customer to say, how did you do that to a parsnip? For customers to experience something different, or to experience excellence through something that’s generally considered mundane, is great for us, and a great challenge for us.

How has coming out of the recession affected the restaurant business? The Celtic Tiger years were great for business, but were they great for food?

I just caught the end of the Celtic Tiger. It was a time when restaurants all over the city were packed, seven nights a week. It was a very healthy time in one way, turning over very good money. But people weren’t being challenged. There wasn’t the discerning customer there is now. I just don’t feel that people cared that much about where they were going. That led to a complacency amongst the restauranteurs and the customers. Nobody was striving for excellence because they weren’t being pushed to strive for excellence. It was a time in Irish gastronomy when everything became quite bland. I didn’t see anything that was reflective of a modern Dublin or a modern Ireland. As soon as the recession kicked in, everything just fell off the map.

Those lean years, do you think a lot of the restaurants doing well today were dreamed up during that time?

Yes, everybody had to go back to the drawing board. Reflect on what they were doing and where they wanted to go. They had to change their model, change their approach. It gave people a kick in the arse to say we need to be better. There’s nothing more humbling than that. It takes a lot of introspection and honesty to stand there and say 'I don’t think we’re good enough. We need to get better.' That’s a great thing. I think it’s something that restaurateurs and chefs and craftspeople should ask themselves all the time.

Does the label of ‘Irish food’ make sense for your food and the Forest Avenue menu?

There’s certainly an element of Irishness about what we do. I don’t like to pigeonhole things into French, Irish, Nordic, whatever, but I think when you come into this restaurant there’s certainly an Irish feel. That’s very important to me. I also wanted the feel to be reflective of the owners. I’m from Cork, my wife is from New York, and when you come in here, there’s definitely a sense of that. I never wanted to say that we do Irish food specifically, but I did want it to have a modern Irish feel about it. To be a progressive, urban Dublin restaurant. A restaurant that really fits in Dublin but at the same time you could put it in London, or Sydney. A world class restaurant.

Photo by George Voronov

Photo by George Voronov

There’s a lot of talk about creating or defining ‘Irish food’. We’re a small country, does an overly traditional approach to Irish food make sense?

I am always rooted in the classics, I look towards the European repertoire. Combinations that to me work and excite me. I think there’s nothing wrong with that, as an Irish person, to be looking towards our European neighbours. Sometimes I think we’re too preoccupied with talking about the establishment of Irish food. Why not involve European food in that as well? People talk about things like indigenous Irish ingredients, that seaweed and oysters have to be Irish now. Where did that come from? I didn’t grow up eating seaweed and oysters. Nobody did. So why is that quintessentially Irish now?

If you look at the Nordic model, the landscape of their larder is probably bigger than the size of Europe. They’re using ingredients from all over Scandinavia and they’re calling it hyper-local or Nordic. But if I use a French mushroom then I’m shot down. People are shutting down the European model, but I believe in Europe and using those influences. There’s a massive melting pot of amazing gastronomic culture.

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