Cork's Michelin Bib restaurant: Nothing leaves the kitchen unless we absolutely love it

BARELY a month after opening, I took one of only 13 seats at Kinsale’s latest trend-setting eatery, St Francis Provisions, to talk to founder Barbara Nealon about her journey from County Clare to San Francisco to Kinsale via art college and an obsession for handmaking sausages.

‘Hand Made with Guts’ became a rallying cry for her – a business that showed no interest in clinically detailing out a five-year business plan, but was all about instinct and doing what feels right in the moment.

Barbara even admits herself that, on paper, this is a business that shouldn’t work. But it only works when she and her team completely embrace the freewheeling spirit that earned them their first Bib Gourmand award from Michelin in March this year.

As she learned, almost to the demise of the restaurant, when that doesn’t happen, a business that shouldn’t work, doesn’t.

“I always caveat things by saying I haven’t opened or run a restaurant before, so everything we do has been done from a place of intuition rather than experience,” says Barbara.

“That intuition is at the heart of the business. Every decision that has been made and every path we have taken has been done as a reaction to the circumstances that have been dealt to us. 

Rather than adhering to a set plan, our best way forward is to utilise the skills and talents that are here in our team.

“That’s always been the starting point, and it’s never not worked out. There is no big vision; there’s no five-year plan. It’s run on emotions and feelings and intuition, and with that comes loss as well as all the happiness. But that’s why it works.”

For a while, those intuitive reactions saw St Francis Provisions evolve from solely a brunch and lunch spot to an evening restaurant with a talented chef at the helm, and Barbara’s vision of a place where collaboration with growers and makers combined with a joyously artistic expression of food. But before they got to celebrate their first anniversary, Covid hit.

“We were trying to keep doing the food we wanted to do at night for our dinner service at home,” Barbara recalls. 

“We kept operating for the community; we had a talented young baker and a really great chef on staff, and I wanted to keep them. I also felt that we had just opened our doors; we didn’t have the option of closing because we were just getting established, and if we can do this, why would we not do it? It just seemed so positive and gave us all something to focus on.”

The business was running on adrenalin, and suddenly that trusting sense of intuition was threatened by an atmosphere of fear.

There was a period when we really didn’t have a clear way forward, and no matter what I did, nothing worked out. It became very clear to me that I had to close for an extended period of time, which is what we did.

Barbara closed for three months at the beginning of 2022 and went away from the business. The constant cycle of closing and reopening throughout Covid, right up to Christmas of 2021, had finally taken its toll. It was time to literally close shop, and rethink everything.

“It was heart-breaking. That’s a period of the business where I did what I felt I had to do rather than what I wanted to do, and it didn’t work out for me. I was really motivated by fear, this idea of scarcity and having to do something and making something work.

“I just needed a total break. There was no guarantee we would reopen as a restaurant ever again, so everything was on the table. I had to see who would come, what talents we would have on the team, what we could do with those talents, and really try to let go of the making-it-work mentality that I had come to thrive on during Covid. It’s not a sustainable mindset. Not in the long term.”

Barbara found her new head chef in Rebecca Recarey, originally from Madrid, a former teacher, and a graduate of Le Cordon Bleu culinary school. Barbara was back doing things the way she always wanted to – this time with an all-female team.

We’ve come back stronger - 80% of all this is about having the right team, and our passion is the producers - all the people we work with. 

"They are the geniuses that bring this food up out of the ground. Nothing interests me less than chefs, to be honest, because this is not about a person – it’s not even about the Michelin Bib because we weren’t looking for that, we weren’t chasing it.”

The Bib Gourmand award from the Michelin Guide highlights restaurants that stand out for their quality and good value cooking. In the Guide’s citation, they noted St Francis Provision’s “Freewheeling… punchy Mediterranean-inspired small plates,” and it joined Cork’s two other Bib-awarded restaurants, Goldie in Cork city, and Cush in Ballycotton.

The description of the restaurant, Barbara says, was right on target.

“It’s pretty much exactly what we do because the menu changes every day and we do exactly what we want to do. There is a huge influence in our food from Spain and the Mediterranean, and that’s the kind of food I’m interested in: not too many ingredients, just good produce.

“Freewheeling ties in with intuition. The menu is intuitive; the dishes are intuitive in that you know when they’re right – there’s a feeling; a balance, a texture, a taste. We take the food extremely seriously; we don’t muck around with it.

We’re very serious about everything that leaves the kitchen, and nothing leaves the kitchen unless we absolutely love it, and we think it’s hitting all the right notes.

“It’s not some kind of witch-y, woman-y approach to running a restaurant. It’s extremely focused, we take it very seriously, and we all eat, sleep and breathe it,” says Barbara.

“We may not be operating in the structures of the traditional patriarchal restaurant, and we’re not – we do things whatever way we want to do them; we freewheel. But within that, there’s a laser focus on quality.

“All this chat about feelings shouldn’t be confused with a casual approach to the product or the experience people have because it is our passion, and it’s absolutely beautiful to have that recognised by the wider industry. But, at the same time we can’t live or die by that stuff.

“Hospitality is about places and creating spaces for people to connect. While we’re chatting to them about a local farm, they start to get a picture of a community, a network of people who care about the place where they live and care about sharing it.

“And for me, St Francis Provisions is about sharing this place with people in a joyful way, and that’s it.

“I guess we’re still trying to process gaining the Michelin Bib Gourmand award a little bit. It was so much of a surprise, and, in a way, it’s nice that places like us are recognised and maybe that represents a bit of a shift.”

The timing of the award couldn’t have been better. Despite being open for four years, 2023 represents their first full trading year, with news of the award arriving at the start of the new season.

The phones did not stop ringing! We were overwhelmed with interest and bookings, and it’s given us the momentum at the beginning of the season that we really needed as a business.

“So many people have been into us for the first time, and it’s been amazing to have people come to Kinsale just to visit the restaurant – that blows my mind! It’s such a privilege for us,” says Barbara.

“That’s where the joy of the Bib really lies, that we’re reaching more people, and when those people come and visit us, they say they haven’t experienced a place like this before, it’s a new approach towards dining for them, I love that.”

Since opening, every person that has been a member of her team has become an asset to her personally, as well as the restaurant.

“I’ve worked with some amazing people. Everyone who has ever been on the team has given so much to this business and enhanced it, whether they’ve stayed or left. Everyone has their own agency and their own path to follow, and I hope anyone that has worked here has grown immensely through that experience, because I know I have.

“I’m an artist, [restaurant manager] Emily is from the arts, Rebecca used to be a teacher, so we’re all coming from different aspects. We’re not industry-hardened, and we don’t do things the way we’re supposed to.

On paper, this place shouldn’t work, but it does because we don’t know how to do it any other way.

For more, follow them on Instagram at www.instagram.com/stfranciskinsale

Next Monday: Kate talks to Ahmet Dede, of Baltimore’s two-star Michelin restaurant, Dede at The Customs House.