Dee Munnelly of Orso: 'I want people to be in this industry because they want to be here'

For 13 years, Orso has created a reputation as the tiny restaurant serving big flavours.

Generous plates sing of colour, vibrancy, and freshness. A signature Levantine flair for heady spices and aromatic herbs made it the go-to place in the city for breakfast bakes and coffee, and a bustling lunchtime grab-and-go spot for zingy salads and fluffy flatbreads.

In recent years, Orso has switched things up. Responding to how diners want to eat today, focus has shifted from mostly takeaway to largely sit-down for lunch and dinner, six days a week.

Overseeing this game of culinary chess is Dee Munnelly, co-owner of Orso and a familiar face to regulars. The restaurant is part of the Market Lane Group that includes Goldie, Elbow Lane, The Castle Café, and the eponymous Market Lane.

Originally from Dublin, Dee moved to Cork 25 years ago with a new baby and a Corkonian husband in tow. Having worked in hospitality while studying a degree in English with Greek and Roman History and a postgrad in Public Relations at UCD, the world of restaurants already had Dee’s heart.

“The people side of things always interested me. That combined with the lure of hospitality was one step forward from the other.”

In 2000, Dee was working at Luigi Malone’s: “It was the place to be,” says Dee, and it was there she met Judy Howard, who would go on to become a founding partner of Market Lane Group.

“We were both Luigi Malone recruits, she had also moved to Cork, we’d both just had babies and didn’t know what we were doing,” says Dee, and a friendship blossomed.

In 2008, Market Lane opened, and Dee joined the team soon after.

During a busy evening service, a customer asked Dee if she planned on being a waitress for the rest of her life?

“I had been moseying along very happy, but you know the way something might be said, you’d flip it off but then it kind of resonates in an annoying way. I suddenly knew I needed to do something for myself,” says Dee.

“I had a drive to do the entrepreneurial thing, but I needed it to be in this industry because it was one I loved, and all I’d ever done. It was make or break time. I had to decide what I was going to do next, so when the opportunity to open Orso came about, it was amazing.”

Good ideas happen when we least expect it, and the concept for Orso happened at the kitchen table surrounded by friends.

“I was sat in Judy’s kitchen, and we were just throwing little ideas out. At that time, in 2011, Ottolenghi was all the rage in London, and because me and Judy were at home with our kids, we cooked a lot, and we had Ottolenghi books.

“To us, what he was doing with food at the time was amazing and there was nothing like it in Cork. That for us was the inspiration for Orso.

“The next challenge was to go from a food scene that, at the time, was all chicken fillet rolls and serving chips and crisps with everything, to selling slow-cooked lamb pies and cous cous. That’s what it was.

“We’re not trailblazing trendsetters by any means. We were inspired by Ottolenghi’s vision. Everything he did, he did with such colour and perfection. We weren’t copying him, but we were 100% inspired by him,” says Dee.

She is the face of Orso and runs the restaurant behind the scenes; the kitchen is the domain of her head chefs.

“We’ve had some really interesting chefs work with us over the years,” says Dee. “We had an Indian chef whose influence on the menu was about bringing his knowledge of spices; a real learning for us because he used spices in ways we wouldn’t think of. Our big thing is fresh herbs and fresh produce, and there is a skill to marrying herbs and spices to make them work.

“I’m always amazed at the chefs that come through our door, and I love what they bring to our table. It makes my heart beat knowing everybody who comes along can influence what we’re doing at any given time.”

Hannes von der Fecht has been head chef at Orso for the past 18 months.

“What’s amazing about Hannes is his understanding of what we’re about. He’s got a real bubbling passion underneath for the food we do. As a collaborative, we both come up with ideas, but I can take no credit for what is presented to people.

“We might fine-tune a dish together because I know what our audience expects or how far to push a boundary. But look at the city: we’ve so much diversity in Cork, so we’re always embracing new ideas. All we want to do is make them work. Once it’s consistently delicious and lovely, that’s it.”

Across Market Lane Group is a commitment to source as much local and seasonal produce as possible. This isn’t a challenge to Orso – even though the cuisine isn’t native to here.

“It’s easier for us than the other venues because we have a lot of creative freedom in our kitchen to play because we’re not constrained by anything: we’re meat, we’re fish, we’re spice, we’re veggie, we’re coeliac, we’re gluten-free, we’re vegan. We have it all, so we have less boundaries.”

Pivoting to become predominantly a sit-down restaurant with an evening service six nights a week is a big transition for Orso. But, says Dee, the change was necessary to adapt what were the changing demands of diners.

“The figures don’t lie,” says Dee. “You could see the decline in takeaway sales because nobody’s in the offices. People who were office-based are no longer grabbing and going back to their desk but are taking their hour, leaving the desk and going for a sit-down lunch.

“It wasn’t that people didn’t want what we did, but the offering needed to satisfy what had changed, which was the behaviour of diners. We did our sums; we couldn’t survive as a business doing takeaway five days a week, so we started opening six nights. Lots of places are closed Mondays and now Monday nights are one of our busiest of the week.”

Whereas many in the restaurant trade would like to move away from night-time service, Dee says she has found her groove.

“When you work a day shift, you’re running a business. At night, you’re running a shift, and it’s joyous because you’re doing what you love doing. At night, you can’t do office admin, emails, phone calls. You only deal with the people who are happy to be there. I love it. It’s so rewarding.”

Food is rightly so the focus of dining out, but more attention is being paid to what is sipped with it, and there is a growing interest in seasonal cocktails and low/no alcohol drinks.

“We do a collaboration with Churchfield Community Gardens where they drop a box to us every Tuesday, but we don’t know what’s going to be in it. Right now, it’s lettuce season so we’re delighted because it’s leaves, leaves, leaves! But we also get wildflowers and herbs like elderflower, lemon verbena, and sage flowers.

“Getting these fresh flowers and herbs adds another side of creativity, and we run the whole bar from it. We infuse vodka with raspberries; we make syrups from fresh mint and rhubarb for cocktails. We change our cocktail menu four times a year and have developed a big portfolio of recipes now.

“We have an old-world wine menu with European wines, mostly from small organic vineyards. All the wines have a story, and I love telling the stories behind our wines. We also added two of the Elbow Lane beers on tap this year: Jawbone and Lager. They’re great beers, and they’re designed to be paired with food.

“What has changed massively are the 0-0 drinkers. The next generation approach drinks so differently now. A recent study predicts that in ten years, sales of 0-0 will outsell alcohol, so we embrace that on our cocktail menus. We want to offer a drink that makes somebody feel lovely - that’s what it’s about. The only thing that’s changed is the alcohol content, nothing else. The presentation is the same. Put a 0-0 spirit in it, and it’ll taste like a real cocktail.”

Constantly evolving is an everyday part of the restaurant business. But after years in the biz and rolling with challenges, there’s no sign the buzz is wearing thin for Dee.

“I love what I do. I know it’s a real cliché answer, but I don’t feel like I’m getting up every morning and just trudging into some job. The diversity this business throws at you every day lends a lot of freedom.

“I want people to be in this industry because they want to and not feel they need to find something else because that’s expected. The nurturing I do now is showing people you can travel; if you meet someone, you can have a family; you can get a credit union loan, you can get a mortgage - you can get all the things that are perceived impossible if you’re a bartender, chef or server. I’d love to break the stereotype on that.

“I’ve had some great people here, and I’m always sad they don’t stay with us forever. But what I do hope is they have left after having a really nice time here. I can’t tell you the amount of people who still come back to me, message me, invite me to their weddings.

“Have I changed anything in the whole wide world? Probably not. But I hope, for the industry, I’ve left an imprint on their minds that means they’ll never think they’d never work in a bar again.

“I don’t want the people that work here to feel like what they’re doing isn’t a real job. I really don’t. There is a future, and I think we show that by nurturing who we have and that there’s a path of progression - that’s important. It means something to me if it means something to them.

“I do bang on about work-life balance because I want to teach them that your job should be somewhere you’re delighted to walk into and supports your lifestyle, because your world outside work is more important than your world in work.

“That’s what keeps me going. It’s not really anything else. It’s about nurturing and getting other people to see what I have seen on my journey.”