Savour Special with Arán Bakery & Bistro

Arán Bakery and Bistro is a fusion of culture and flavours and it's no wonder with a husband-and-wife team at the hatch. Nicole Server-Pawlukojć is originally from the Philippines but has worked as a chef in Italy and Denmark. Her husband Bart Pawlukojć is Polish but raised in Ireland, he too has worked in Denmark.

They both have their hands full this weekend at Savour Kilkenny.

Dinner at Aran with locally sourced food. Photo by Ruth Caldor Potts 

So, what does this fusion of love and food bring to Kilkenny? Thankfully the dynamic duo opened Arán Bakery and Bistro four years ago and it has gone from strength to strength. It has become one of the most popular artisan award winning Bistro and Bakery in Kilkenny.

As well as being a chef, Bart is an interior designer, a butcher specialising in Italian charcuterie and has an interest in fermenting. Nicole is a professional trained chef and has always been passionate about food. She initially trained as a chef in Italy and returned to the Philippines where she trained and worked as a Pastry Chef. Soon, she went to Denmark where she quickly got hired in some of the best restaurants in Denmark.

Together they decided to open a café with a small bakery in Kilkenny City, agreeing that would shine a spotlight on bread and local food, using the best ingredients from the South East and beyond. Here is a glimpse into their savoury world...

Arán Lemon & Raspberry Cube from Arán Bakery and Bistro

How did you two meet?

Nicole: We met in Denmark when we were both interns as chefs. On my first day I stood next to Bart.

Bart: It was love at first sight. We started living together after one week and I proposed after eight months. We got married in 2016.

Why train in Denmark?

Nicole: It was the place to go at the time. Denmark is such a melting pot of different cultures that people just want to work there. We worked with 12 different nationalities, and we had to make a family meal every day. So just from that one meal, you taste so many cultures and flavours that you would never have tasted before.

Bart: Denmark was all the rage. Chefs go there because restaurants are really good. Plus, Nordic cuisine was all the hype back in the day. There was a period when everybody went to Spain for El Bulli and then Japan for Jiro. Its designated travel for work experience based on food trends.

Why settled down in Kilkenny?

Bart: I was raised in Ireland. My family came here in the great Polish wave of 2004. We lived in Palmerstown and Greystones in Dublin before moving to Kilkenny for my sister’s job.

Nicole: I’ve been a nomad all my life until I met Bart. We visited Kilkenny on our honeymoon, and I liked it.

Where did you both work previously in Kilkenny before opening Arán?

Bart: My first job was in Lautrec’s. I also worked in Zuni and Lyrath Estate.

Nicole: When we moved here, I needed to prove that I wasn’t a burden to the State because I am a non-EU citizen. Bart was the head chef in Matt the Millers, and I was his second.

Arán Bakery and Bistro is one of a kind here in Kilkenny. Was it always the dream?

Nicole: No! The simple answer is that I cannot work for anybody because what I want to do is not something that anybody else is doing. I was mentally drained when I was restrained in what I could cook. So, I decided if I can’t work for anyone, I would rather work for myself within my means! So, we asked each other what we could do?

We had savings for a house put aside so we decided to use it and we started to look at premises.

Bart: Opening something was always on the table, but we thought it was going to be way later down the line. When we found the premises on Barrack Street, every single business person advised us against it.

Nicole: There was only one person who told us to take it, that it was the perfect location and if we don’t take it we are stupid. That was Seamus Sheridan from Sheridans Cheesemongers in Galway. Seamus is such a character, after seeing the first premises on Barrack Street, he wanted to know what was across the road.  He recognised back then that the old vet shop would make a perfect premises for a bakery. Which we opened two years later.

Bart: To be honest Seamus Sheridan as well as Rod and Julie Calder-Potts were the most important people that have helped us throughout the years.

Everyone in Kilkenny remembers the queues outside Aran during the pandemic. It was crazy.

Bart: We didn’t have a choice. We were only open for six months with €200 to our name. We didn’t even have that month's rent for our home. We didn’t have any back up, so it was live or die.

Nicole: When they announced we had to close, Bart and I took three days off to plan as closing was not an option for us. All our savings were in Arán, we could not stay shut. We had to think fast, so we decided to remodel our business structure and turn it into a takeaway slash bakery. We turned the little doggie door into a takeaway hatch. We just had to pivot.

Bart: It was just Nicole, one of our friends and me working on the reopening day. We thought that was plenty of people but we had no idea how busy we were going to be. We looked out the door and saw the queue and thought this is not going to work. I literally rang every single person I knew and asked if they were free because we just needed pairs of hands. Our coffee rep ended up doing coffee for us, but he couldn’t believe what he got himself into!

Who gets the most stressed out of the two of you in the kitchen?

Nicole: Me. I stress more than Bart because I plan ahead. I’m just a woman, I stress more!

Bart: Nicole stresses in advance, but I deal with the stressful situations.

You’ve told me before that it cost you a lot of money to support local producers during the pandemic, but you still did it.

Nicole: Yes, because they are just like us. They don’t have huge backers, otherwise they would have been left with nothing.

Bart: It wasn’t a lot; it didn’t change their lives, but it all helped.

Still to this day Arán is incredibly supportive of small producers. Who have you on your menu at the moment?

Nicole: From Kilkenny, we have Dizzy Goat Farm, Highbank Organic Orchards, Riversfield Farm, Bosco, Mooncoin Beetroot, Goatsbridge Trout, Oak Forest Mills, and Kells the Little Mill Company.

Bart: There’s loads more. All our eggs are from Ballon in Carlow, Lorraine's Country Kitchen and we also have a plan to make our own mozzarella in Knockdrinna’s new cheese dairy.

What’s next for Arán?

Bart: We are going to renovate the Bistro and we want to create more space for summer outside dining. Everything is built here by us; everything is from Ikea, so we want to take it up another notch and make it more of a place for nighttime diners.

Nicole: For the daytime it's fine because it's very casual, but we need to lift the design so that we can also use it for evenings.

Can you give us any idea what’s on your Savour seven course taster menu?

Bart: It's funny because the Savour dinner has been sold out for months, but I just literally wrote the menu today!

Nicole: This is how Bart operates!

Bart: Our diners will be treated to an experience that starts in San Sebastian, then we are moving into Greece before moving onto French dishes. Then we are moving to Italy, before moving back to Spain again, finishing with soft serve ice-cream which we are going to serve for one night only as I’m borrowing the soft serve machine.

Nicole: This is all subject to change!!

At the end of a long day, what is your guilty pleasure food wise?  

Bart: A pizza from Roccos in Bagenalstown.

Nicole: Nothing beats a Vermouth Martini on the rocks.

Don’t miss Bart & Nicole’s talk about FOODPRENEURS – GROWING YOUR FOOD BUSINESS ON The Savour Stage, Saturday, October 27 at 10am https://savourkilkenny.com