Yahoo News Richard Corrigan on Daffodil Mulligan: 'I can still do the craziest, lunatic things at the last minute – I love the spontaneity'
Richard Corrigan can grip with a glance as tightly as if he were shaking hands. He is a big man who makes his points banging the table, or slapping your shoulder. He has a disarming laugh – a surprisingly girlish giggle – and will roll from a whisper to a roar and back within the length of a sentence.
This, and a vocal tick – to end every sentence with ‘youknowwhatImean?’, run together as one word by his Dublin accent, still thick after 30 years cooking in London – mean he’s famously engaging company. “I’m a good guy to go out with,” he says, “If we went out to the Groucho 10 years ago, I’d be the last guy, being removed by security.”
While he insists his ‘proper drinking’ days are done – “I do think there’s a time to take stock of your own self destruct mechanisms and all of that, going out till three or four in the morning and calling it work” – he’s not for forgetting it all. “I can still do the craziest, lunatic things at the last minute, because I love the spontaneity, where you find that moment when the fun is. You have to reach out and look for it. You have to chase the fun, you know?”
‘Fun’ seems to be the founding of his latest place, Daffodil Mulligan, which opens tomorrow on City Road. While his two other London restaurants, Bentley’s Oyster Bar & Grill, and Corrigan’s Mayfair, are unabashedly for fine dining, the new place is set to be markedly cheaper and more relaxed. Upstairs is for eating; downstairs, a saloon bar, is for drinking. Looking after it are storied landlord Tony Gibney and his family, who run Gibney's Of Malahide, fondly thought of as one of Ireland’s best pubs.
“You know the difference between Guinness in Ireland and the UK?” says Corrigan, “Same product. But it’s a different gas in ours. But the other thing is, different pipe in Ireland. Bigger. Gibney made them put in the proper pipe here. He’s got that pull, that relationship with them. I don’t.”
The bar, which will have live music from early next year – “I want spoken word, jazz, folk, everything from Kent to Newcastle to north of that. I think it's fantastic. What we’re going to do is, we're gonna intertwine that, you know, Irish, Scottish thing, that Celtic thing” – has needed the least work, and looks fairly like it does when the name on the door was Nuala’s, run by ex-Chiltern Firehouse man Niall Davidson. Upstairs is practically all new. If an Irish place failed here before, I ask, what makes Corrigan think he’ll succeed where Davidson didn’t – especially when the industry is riding through a rough patch?
There’s a look, and for a moment, the voice lowers to a growl. “It's called life experience... that's the difference between the two,” he says, then brightens, “But by the way, everything can fail again. The way of the turn of life is: no one has any god given right to succeed.
“Put it like this, if Niall wasn't onto something good, I wouldn't have looked at the site. And it was a beautifully put together project. He'd nearly, nearly done it here, I really mean that, hand on heart. He was as close as anyone to making an amazing success – but to make an amazing success, you need a team around you, a management team, a chefs team and I think the shortcomings possibly were on that front only…”
Besides, he adds, he’s got form opening against the odds. “Corrigan, opportunist. In 2008, when the world was down, read the f****** review, the Telegraph, ‘Is he mad to open a restaurant in 2008?’ But I thought, if we could get it [Corrigan’s Mayfair] working, it won’t be 2008 in two years time. That’s where I’m an optimist.
“And why would I not make a go of it? Why would I not take the chance? You think I’m getting this site on a good f****** year in London?!”
Corrigan looks to have the right support, too; besides Gibney, John Nugent of Kings Place in King's Cross is helping with logistics. Corrigan’s son Richie is also pitching in – the chef tells me “this place, I figured, it’s for the next generation, you know? I didn’t tell ‘em, but that’s what I’m thinking” – and he’s sourcing the majority of his food from his estate in Ireland, Virginia Park Lodge.
“You be in first thing in the morning, you’ll see exactly what’s coming in for lunch. We’ve picked all my kale and corns, all the leeks. So what’s here now is what the farm supplies, our van comes in every Monday, Tuesday.”
Besides the fresh fruit n’ veg from his gardens, the menu offers the easy kind of comfort; steak, lobster, pork belly, lamb chops and the like done on the wood grill. He talks about simple pleasures – “Honestly, homemade bread and blackcurrant jam is, well, beautiful”, he says, wistfully, then comes back: “I love mushy peas. I do! Mushy peas and a lovely jelly. Eh, f*** it, sounds good to me."
“This is a comfortable, good time place. Just with an amazing wine list,” he grins, calling over Richie to confirm that there’ll be glasses under the list for under a fiver. “Two,” says Richie, “and they’re tasting amazing. Amazing.”
Shortly after, Corrigan is up, touring the place, pointing out pictures, noticing fixes, prodding at his point that he doesn’t do roll-outs. The voice is booming now. “I like being surrounded by fun people, with fun ideas: left, right, liberal, I don’t care. But the ones who have opinions, who’re willing to express them. I love their company, I just love it. Whatever they’ve got, I want to hear it, discuss it, have a pint over it.”
He giggles. “We want to be running a wonderful place where there’s fun, there’s laughter. We call it the craic. It’s a word that can be overused for whatever reason, but we want a genuine place where there’s laughter. That, that’s what we’d like to achieve.” He doesn’t ask, but I know exactly what he means.
Daffodil Mulligan, from November 12, 70-74 City Rd, EC1Y 2BJ, daffodilmulligan.com
