Meet the creative duo behind Cork’s spicy Tiger Balm Club

It’s hot, spicy and made to make you feel good, but a Tiger Balm Club (TBC) dining experience is not about soothing aching muscles – it’s about fun, flame, flavour and nothing but good vibes.

At the heart of TBC are pals, Cork chef Mark Ahern, formerly of House Café, Bar Pigalle, and Good Day Deli, and Bryan Rudd from Portland, Oregan, known to many for his high octane ‘No Killer, All Filler’ food content as Sunshine Primo.

The pair share a passion for the cuisines of south-east Asia. Both spent a decade living and working in that part of the world - Mark in Thailand, and Bryan in Vietnam.

Serendipity knocked when they found common ground over an Argentinian grill in the courtyard of a gastropub in Watergrasshill last May. It was meant to be.

So, what is Tiger Balm Club?

Supper clubs and pop-ups are my favourite dining experiences. Designed to deliver fleeting moments of deliciousness in unexpected places, these are guerilla restaurants popping up in the blink of an eye, cooking an abundance of droolsome morsels, wrapped up in chaos and good times, only to disappear with such completeness as to wonder if it had happened at all.

Influenced by their time in southeast Asia, TBC’s cuisine is a Viet-Thai mash up colliding with excellent Irish produce, Mark’s chefing prowess, and Bryan’s butchery and charcuterie skills.

This is no stuffy fine dining experience. As Bryan says: “I want the music to be a little too loud. I want you to have one or two too many drinks. I want the food to punch you in the face. And I want it to bring people together to celebrate two beautiful cultures with a lot of delicious food.”

Amen to that!

For both Mark and Bryan, life before the Celtic Tiger roared was blessed with highs and scarred by lows, and my pen has barely touched the page before Mark is eager to set the record straight.

“I didn’t have a heart attack. I had a pulmonary embolism,” he says.

In 2023, Mark had a very public health crisis. He collapsed in the kitchen of Good Day Deli, stretchered out by a paramedic team through a full restaurant. For nearly two years, Mark was well and truly out of the game. Even if he wanted to go back into a restaurant kitchen, he couldn’t. “Doctor’s orders,” he says.

No-one can tell Mark why this happened to him. While he has found his way back to work again, life is altogether very different. Even when things did begin to return to some semblance of normality, every day was wrought with anxiety. “I’d go out for dinner with friends but go home straight after. I was so anxious I might collapse in the street,” he says.

It was his friend, Victor Murphy, co-owner of the multi-award-winning gastropub O’Mahony’s of Watergrasshill, who coaxed Mark out of retirement in May, 2025.

Victor was short-staffed and needed an urgent dig out. It was the turning point needed to claim a life back for himself.

Of course, health issues didn’t always dominate Mark’s life, but neither did food, at least not at first. A career in pharma wasn’t holding him, so he took off travelling the world. He got as far as Thailand, fell in love, and spent years at a time living and working in Thailand, eating and socialising with newly found Thai friends and family. “I saw both aspects of Thai life: as the foreigner living there, the real Thai food and where it really comes from.”

When Mark returned to Cork, a friend recognised his cookery talent and encouraged him to pursue it.

“I was 30 when I became a chef. My daughter was born a year later, so I pushed cheffing back and went to culinary school instead. Wherever I got a stage, I’d take it: San Sebastian, Biarritz, Bayonne - I’d do everything I could. In Thailand, I staged at the Royal Institute.”

Mark gained a reputation as a skilled chef at Cornstore, the former House Café which instilled a reverence for provenance, Bar Pigalle, and Good Day Deli. But then, Mark’s world stopped on October 7, 2023 until almost two years later when a man walked into a bar…

The life of Bryan in Portland, Oregan, was one filled with music, art, creativity and food. Working as a visual and sound artist, musician and food writer, his love of food came out on top. He worked the deli of Italian restaurant Piazza Italia making sausage, piquing an interest in charcuterie, and travelled to Gascony to learn more by living with a family on a pig farm.

“We worked five days a week. Mondays we took ten pigs to the abattoir, made boudin noir, boudin blanc, all the pâté, and butchered the rest.

“The rest of the week was saucissons, saucisson sec. Weekends were for selling at the market.”

Bit by the travel bug, Bryan made his way to Vietnam, where he produced music, headed up the visual arts department at an international school, and met his Corkonian wife, Ciara.

“I very happily lived in Saigon for 10 years and never saw myself leaving,” says Bryan.

But then covid happened.

“We weren’t allowed to go outside. You couldn’t leave your door except for one hour a week to go to the grocery store under supervision. That was for six months. Then, one day, I had a note slipped under the door that said we had 30 days to leave. Didn’t get to say goodbye to any friends, just got picked up at our door, sent to the airport and left.”

Leaving Saigon, his happy place, to arrive in Cork, a city unknown to Bryan, left him reeling.

“I was living in Waterfall on a farm just far enough away that I couldn’t drive and there wasn’t a bus. I felt pretty down and out. I’ve still never dealt with it,” Bryan says, “but community is everything; friends and family are everything, and Cork has welcomed me very well, I’d say.

“I thought, I can either walk around and be a wet sandwich or I can try to see the positive stuff. It took a while but eventually I started seeing the positive side, started making videos, and made very good friends.”

In very different ways, Mark and Bryan have had to navigate a life interrupted. But without it, these guys may never have found each other.

Fast forward to May, 2025, and Mark is working at a borrowed asado grill at O’Mahony’s of Watergrasshill.

“I wanted to do what I was comfortable with. Victor posted on their socials about it, and it sold out for the two nights: Argentinian the first night, just to ease it in, and Thai the second night which is when Bryan came,” Marks says.

“He came into the kitchen, eating things with me. We realised we both need something for ourselves.

“We hadn’t found anywhere in Cork, or even Ireland, to get those exact flavours we both fell in love with during our time in Thailand and Vietnam.”

In that moment, Tiger Balm Club was born.

“It was like the stars were aligning in the galaxy, you know?” says Bryan. “I was driving home that night with Ciara, saying I just don’t understand why Mark would live in Thailand for ten years, I would live in Saigon for ten years, and we’d both be in this place that doesn’t have the Thai or Vietnamese food we love. It’s a no-brainer.”

The guys worked on a few smaller pop-ups at Plugd and Forde’s Bar, but the first official outing for TBC was at Cork’s biennial music, arts and culture festival, Sounds From A Safe Harbour.

“I got a call from someone saying Mary Hickson [festival director] wants to meet you and see what you’re all about, can you be at the River Lee in 30 minutes?” recalls Bryan.

“I walked in, and they said we’d love for you to do a pop-up, but really anything you want to do. I opened my book and wrote: ‘Mary Hickson said I can do whatever I want’, looked at her, and said be careful what you wish for because I’m going to hold you to that! I ended up becoming the food curator for the festival.

“We had pop-ups, secured all the food for the artists, and did our first official event as Tiger Balm Club.”

Serving 70 ‘covers’, their first event boosted confidence - this food was what other people were into as well.

“It was so great; I was buzzing off it. From there, things started flowing with offers coming in from other places. But we both took some time out instead and came back with our first event of 2026 in January at The White Horse, Ballincollig.”

The two-night pop-up saw 100 diners per night enjoy dishes such as handmade spicy sausage and Bryan’s signature wings, to West Cork buffalo salad, a Vietnamese take on ceviche, and dessert flavoured with fish sauce caramel.

“One of the most important parts of the night is the experience and having fun,” says Bryan. “The whole idea is to have a good time because every time you eat out in Vietnam or Thailand, that’s what you get. You sit at big tables, it’s loud, it’s fun, and everyone shares everything.”

In February, TBC hosted an alternative Valentine’s dinner at Aye; last week they headed to Ballymaloe Grainstore as part of the venue’s new Food Sessions, and on April 25 they will be taking over the elegant dining room at The Old Bank, Dungarvan, for Waterford Festival of Food.

Despite the historic surroundings of their Waterford pop-up, they won’t be changing their style.

“We don’t have to show up to the Old Bank and be the Old Bank,” says Bryan, and as well as a full menu in the dining room, they’ll also be serving up their signature snacks of handmade sausage, wings, and fish patties in the bar downstairs.

“We want it to be a fun thing rather than formal sit down, there,” says Mark. “The music will be a little bit loud; the lights will be down, people can wander in and out of the bar downstairs and we’ll be serving two long tables upstairs, so it can be for everyone.

“Tiger Balm Club is a supper club that celebrates you having a great time, and we’re just there to ride that wave with you, give you some tasty food and bring people together,” says Bryan. “That’s what life is about for me, so why not eat some tasty food while we’re at it?”

For news of upcoming pop-up events, see @tigerbalmclub on Insta.