'Heartbroken' at Cork restaurant closure, says owner, but 'excited' for the future

When Kevin Aherne opened Sage Restaurant in Midleton in 2007 at the age of 24, he did so with a pioneering concept few other chefs shared.

At its core, the ethos of Sage’s 12 Mile Menu was simple: a young chef showcases seasonally changing hyper-local produce from land and sea on a menu and in a space epitomising contemporary fine dining.

In practice, it took dedication and determination while also changing minds and shaping a new gastronomic direction in Irish food.

The concept celebrated the artisans that made this vision a daily reality. Kevin, Sage and his 12 Mile Menu represented a compelling nexus: Cork’s incredible larder meeting an ambitious, talented Cork chef.

Late one June evening, I received a message: ‘Kate, heads up, I’m going to be closing Sage at the end of July.’ I replied: Can we talk?

When your job is to build genuine relationships with people in an industry you love, you become attuned to noticing certain signs heralding the distant tinkling of alarm bells…

Earlier this year, Kevin and Réidin (his wife and business partner) announced stepping back from fEast, the hugely successful festival they co-founded celebrating East Cork food. It was time, they said, to hand the reins over to new hands for the festival’s next chapter. There was also their Covid pivot, Sage Products, (a range of sauces, dips, condiments and meals to retail) seemingly sprouting legs, arms and Red Bull-like wiiiings.

In 2023, Sage Products moved into a new, bigger production facility, and picked up a silver award for their moreish Buttermilk Ranch Dressing at Blas na hEireann.

The 16 and a half years of Sage Restaurant had seen off a recession, floods, a pandemic, more floods, and, as I remarked once, undergone more transformations than Madonna, the first of which, Sage 2.0, coincided with their 12-year anniversary.

Anyone who owns a restaurant will tell you it’s not easy, but it was Kevin’s passion for the ethos of Sage and the community built around it – of customers, staff, suppliers and producers – that fuelled him for every 6am start and late evening finish.

So, I say to Kevin; Talk me through the decision to close Sage.

“I made a decision a couple of months back; I just felt now is the right time to stop the restaurant and focus all my attention on what I’m doing elsewhere. I spoke to Réidin and we’re both similar in what we were feeling at the time,” says Kevin.

“The new business is very busy; it’s still getting off the ground, but it’s taking up a lot of my time. 

It’s a completely different animal to running a restaurant and I felt like I was doing two things and doing both half-assed.

Working both businesses meant Kevin was working seven days a week. He and Réidin have two small children, aged four and seven, and the lack of downtime was draining physically, mentally, and emotionally.

There was no time off, yet the effect of not being in the restaurant as much was a source of constant worry.

“I realised I didn’t really want to have a restaurant any more when it wasn’t 100% of me being at the nucleus of it,” he says.

“The 12 Mile Menu was a massive part of my life for years, and in my professional life, that’s probably the happiest I’d ever been, and probably the pinnacle of my cooking career thus far. I really loved it, and it’s so different to what I’m doing now that it’s hard to compare them.

“I’ve gone from foraging in rivers at 6am to being in a production facility at 6am; from a 12 Mile Menu to serving 1200 miles around Ireland. They’re so different, it’s hard to fathom how did I go from that to this in a space of five years.”

Nonetheless, Kevin expresses gratitude for the opportunities Sage Restaurant afforded and for the new, very different opportunities Sage Products now has.

“Sage Products gives me everything I want in a business: inventiveness, coming up with new products and ideas, meeting people, problem solving, sales. The idea is to grow this business as much as possible and bring it to another level. But this and the restaurant - I just couldn’t give enough to either one of them to progress them anymore. I had to make the decision which way it was going to go.

“Réidin and I did the restaurant for 16 years, but now I’m going to be able to give 100% of my time, my effort and my thinking to one business as opposed to two. We just weren’t giving [the restaurant] the attention it needed anymore; it had reached its pinnacle and achieved more than I ever thought it would, ever. 

We both know it’s the right decision, we’re both happy and content in the decision that we’ve made, but we’re still heartbroken.

The restaurant will live on in Sage Products and its range of retail products designed by chefs to a restaurant standard.

“We supply Dunnes Stores, and nationally with Musgraves SuperValu, some independent outlets and we also do some private label for retailers as well.”

The range includes 12 different dips, sauces and condiments, eight ready meals, and the operation currently employs fourteen staff members. As well as retail, the future plan is to supply into the restaurant trade.

“The idea is to develop different recipes for how restaurants, cafes and sandwich bars can use our Sage Products range so they will have different arsenals in their kitchen. I use Sage Products in the restaurant; it meant we could keep our prep down which keeps labour cost down increases profit in the kitchen and helps restaurants at a time when it’s difficult to make money,” explains Kevin.

“We produce good quality Irish products using good quality ingredients at a good costing - no-one else is doing that.

“Restaurants are struggling to find good chefs, and we can make as many excuses as we want about why, but they just aren’t there. Restaurants and cafes are having to buy in products to reheat and serve. 

That’s fine, but I’d like to be able to give them the option to purchase a better product than what’s currently there and support an Irish business.

It’s good to hear the excitement in his voice for this new chapter. It signals that Kevin and Réidin are ready to move on.

“The restaurant ran its course, it did what it was supposed to do, and now it’s going to do something else. We loved the time we had there, but it’s seen its season.”

Sage restaurant closes for the final time on Sunday, July 28, with a bit of a hooley to shake the roof one last time.