A Day In The Life: Wesley Bearpark, Executive Chef at The Brasserie, Kilkenny

Wesley Bearpark exploded onto the Kilkenny cuisine trail five years ago when he ran the hugely successful Grill in Lyrath Hotel.

Now Kilkenny Hibernian has bagged the highly skilled chef as their new Executive Chef over The Brasserie.

Siobhan Donohoe interviewed Executive Head Chef Wesley Bearpark at his recent Tapas & Salsa night for Savour Food Festival 

Needless to say, the Brasserie has gone from strength to strength since Wesley has taken on the top job, bringing an international flare to Irish comfort food this Christmas.

Wesley is from Cape Town in South Africa, born in KwaZula-Natal town. He went to a hospitality school in Cape Town and spent five years in America travelling around discovering new flavours in different kitchens.

In 2014 he arrived in Ireland where he worked for Dylan McGrath for four years in Fade Street Social, Rustic Stone, and Brasserie 66.

In 2017 he worked for Jamie Oliver in Dundrum and moved to Kilkenny in 2018 to be close to his son.

Here is a glimpse into Wesley’s kitchen…

Why the move to Hibernian’s Brassiere?
I like the smaller kitchen and I don’t have to concentrate on banqueting and weddings.

You cater a lot for the local palate. They are our best customers and plates like lamb shank and medallions, salmon, and slow cooked beef featherblade are real Irish comfort food going down well on our menu.

Is there any South African flair to the Brassiere menu?
There is, with the daily specials, I like to play around with them.

The way we eat in South Africa, we don’t go home and cook a roast or dinner. We go home and we braai. You guys call Braai a barbecue and we do it for hours; it’s like a ritual.

There’s none of this cooking in the kitchen, we cook outside as we have the weather for it.

What was it like working for Jamie Oliver?
I spent some time with him when I trained at his head office in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

In the head office, they plan for all his kitchens all over the world, even his delis in the airport. The whole operation is controlled from Piccadilly Circus.

Jamie is very structured; any recipe that he has ever made is on his system and database.

If any of his chefs want to make a Jamie recipe, we just log in online into his database and you can get every single recipe he has ever made. He has a team of development chefs that are developing new menus every day.

Every day in his restaurants, we had to make three different specials and these come off of the database. It’s word to word from Jamie’s bible!

When I worked in his Dundrum restaurant, I had to send photographs of the specials to the manager in London, and he would approve it or not. It had to be up to spec and Jamie’s standard.

He has a system called ‘Josie’ in place for every one of his restaurants.

With this system, he has a team that will visit the poultry farm, the pig farm and the fresh produce farm - this team will approve if the farm is high quality enough for Jamie's kitchens.

They will check if the chickens are happy, if the welfare of the animals are met. If the product is not high quality, he won’t use it.

As a chef working for him, I wasn’t allowed to order off just any supplier. It had to be from an accredited supplier approved in his ‘Josie’ system.

The pricing on his menus might be a little bit more than some restaurants, but the effort that he goes into to get the best quality justifies the price.

What is your food ethos and style of cooking?
I try to bring a South African flair to my dishes, but I really love Italian food. I love the way Italians eat - they just put everything on the table and share with the family.

I believe we should prepare our vegetables the way they come up from the ground. We should use every part of the vegetable, don’t peel them, just wash them. You don’t need to be wasting time peeling!

When I make butternut squash soup, I used the seeds and every part of it including the skin. There are many uses for every vegetable, the leaves, and stems, it’s all flavour.

As a chef you have to steal with your eyes, that’s the most important thing about being a great chef. You can take so much information just with your eyes and I have taken a lot from everywhere I’ve worked. My style is a fusion of Jamie Oliver’s ethos, Dylan McGrath’s creativity, slow cooking, and smoking from the American and Mexican chefs. I am a fusion of chefs, styles and countries!

What is the typical Christmas Day dinner in South Africa?
We don’t do turkey and ham, we do chicken, beef tongue, gammon all on the barbecue. Our Christmas is in the middle of our summer, so it’s straight into the main course with salads.

The beef tongue is served cold, almost like a pate. Instead of the Christmas pudding we do a malva pudding, which is a sweet pudding of South African origin. It’s a warm pudding served with custard. It’s similar to a sticky toffee pudding with loads of apricots instead of dates.

How can we attract more chefs back to the industry?
Introduce a four-day week and give them three days off. You can’t make people work five long days anymore. It’s a tough industry now to work in because there are so few of us.

There are no commis chefs anymore. Executive chefs are having to train their kitchen porters to come into the kitchen.

Ireland is struggling now to get chefs, but we have thousands of chefs trying to get into this country on work permits from the likes of South Africa, Sri Lanka, and India.

People from these countries are begging to work in this industry.

The Irish Government is not giving them the visas to come work here as it’s not deemed as essential work. However, we need the people to keep businesses open.

What’s your favourite thing to cook on your day off?
It’s not very chefy because when I am at home, I am eating with my six-year-old son mostly. So, I can’t make anything too spicy or too fancy. You can’t beat a good roast chicken dinner.

However, when we get a nice sunny day, I love to visit my friend in Dungarvan, Co Waterford and braai on the beach! The braai is a whole day event!

You started serving the Brasserie Christmas menu last weekend. What can diners expect to feast on?
We have a goats cheese tartlet and a warm duck salad with ginger and soy dressing, winter soup with Irish brown bread for starters.

For mains we will have a beef rib which I’ve slow cooked for 16 hours and then roll it off the bone.

This is an American-influenced dish, where I learned a lot about briskets, slow cooking, and smoking.

We also have the traditional turkey and ham, stuffing and brussel sprouts, red wine reduction of red cabbage and cranberry sauce.

For desserts we are doing a trio of desserts, which consists of a small Christmas pudding, a chocolate brownie and a mulled wine pear served with vanilla ice-cream.

Mike Bradley, the new Operations Manager

Mike Bradley, the new Operations Manager, also chatted to us about the exciting Christmas cocktail list the Kilkenny Hibernian.

Mike has spent 20 years in the Canary Islands, bringing another international flare to the Kilkenny Hibernian.

Mike, what can we expect that’s different this Christmas on your specialised cocktail list?
We will have some tasty table toppers for Christmas, such as Tanqueray 10 and Poachers’ Elderflower Tonic. We will also have a vanilla and chocolate martini, as well as a sour candy cocktail which is a Plymouth sloe gin, Cointreau, apple juice and orange juice, lemon juice and sugar!

The Saturday bottomless brunch has been a huge success and bookings are now open for next year!

For more information on the Brasserie’s Christmas menus visit www.kilkennyhibernianhotel.com