How I Met My Partner: Food is the language of love for Bastion’s Helen and Paul in Kinsale

The owners of Bastion restaurant in Kinsale, Paul McDonald and Helen Noonan, met when they worked together at Adare Manor, where he was a chef and she worked in the golf office.

Paul said: “She used to come in to the kitchen stealing jam and we were always at loggerheads over it.”

But there was a spark there, and the pair started dating.

They went to Boston together for three months, then came back and took up work in Glasgow for a year. After that, they moved to Cobh and worked there before opening up The Mews in Baltimore together, followed by a move to Perth for a year.

After returning to Ireland they worked in Dublin where Paul was the head chef in the Westbury Hotel and Helen worked in the accounts department at Top Oil, before moving to Galway where Paul worked at the G Hotel while Helen moved to her company’s Galway office.

“I was doing massive hours, 100 a week, there was no budget for staff at the time so I was just doing it all. Because Helen was working 9-5 Monday to Friday, I wasn’t seeing much of her,” Paul said.

“She was ready to leave me, I could feel it, so I decided to organise a couple of days off work for a ‘save the relationship tour’.

“We’d do one night in Kinsale, and from there to Baltimore to see who was in the restaurant we used to have, then to Killarney where we’d go horse riding and then to Limerick where Helen is from to see her parents.”

But, he explained, it didn’t quite work out that way.

“We made it to Kinsale and we saw this restaurant, it used to be Aperitif, was empty and right next door to it was an auctioneer.

'ONE MORE GO'

“We knocked on window of the auctioneer but there was nobody there, so we wandered around the town and we were sitting in the car but we said we’d have one more go.”

This time, she was in and they asked if the place next door was for lease because there was no sign in the window.

“She had the keys and said I’ll show you now, then after she did, myself and Helen had a wee chat for five minutes and we said ‘yeah, we’ll take it.’

“We never made it to Killarney for horse riding or to Baltimore or to Helen’s mum and dad, we had to stay the night in Kinsale to wait for the funds to be released by the bank for the deposit then we signed the contract.

“We drove back up to Galway where we both handed in our notices. That was nine years and eight months ago.”

Bastion became Kinsale’s first Michelin Star restaurant in 2020.

The couple married in New York 2017 at the City Hall in Manhattan, and have been back there for their anniversary multiple times since.

“Restaurants in Kinsale often close in January or February, and what we do with our time is go out to eat in as many good restaurants as we can and come back with ideas,” said Paul. After they married, the couple ate in Maddison Park for the first time.

Paul said: “Working together has its benefits and drawbacks, but I look back at that time in Galway and if we weren’t working together we wouldn’t get to see each other — all in all it’s great, we’ve got a good relationship — we like each other, that helps.”

After all their travelling, they have “committed” to their life now, he said, explaining: “We bought a house in Bandon and we love it, we love West Cork and heading out to the beach at Inchydoney or to Dunmore House, we’re 25 minutes from the city and 20 minutes away from work, so it’s an ideal place for us.”