Paul Flynn, Tannery Restaurant on travel

My name is Paul Flynn and I’m from Dungarvan and I was working in London for 10 years learned a lot there, came back ran a brassiere in Dublin for 3 years, and opened up the Tannery almost 15 years ago.

And really it’s been a question of slowly expanding what we do here over the last 15 years. And we opened up the town house, all a natural progression really. The town house; because people wanted to come stay with us and the cookery school because it was something I wanted to do. And there are rooms there as well so the whole idea now is that people come down they eat they stay and they do a course so it feeds into itself.

Also I have a couple of books out. I was the food writer for the Irish times and I had my own TV series.

I don’t do a lot of travel for business. The fact that I have a business rooted here I totally don’t travel half as much as I’d like.

I have made a couple of business trips to the States and cooked over there for maybe Bord Bia in front of food critics and journalists and all that on a couple of occasions, but not in the last five years. I’ve been refusing things more than anything else.

We’ve had two little girls recently so they’re young so for personal travel for the first time in my life I’m looking at sun holidays, I really never did, I never would they bore me out of my mind. But having said that holidays are more than just about yourself they’re about keeping everybody happy, and when you’ve two small girls you have to keep them happy and when they’re happy, you’re happy. And the sun holiday tends to happen and I never thought I would be going on sun holidays. Because normally if we ever go anywhere I would have restaurants meticulously researched, and I’d spend the day driving to the restaurant and then I’d leave one and go to another and we would spend the day in a car nearly. I’d be exhausted coming home from holidays. So I am so much more a city break kind of person. We try to go to Paris every year. New York is my favorite city in the world and I haven’t been there for about 5 years.

I pick up new ideas on holidays, I love my business and it’s important to keep it moving and important to keep developing it and learning yourself. You learn that from other people, I like to see who is at the top of the game, why are they at the top of the game. There are certain places that I love. For me the vibe is really important so that’s why I get very bored at high end places as they tend to be very quiet and very reverential and low key places tend to be good fun and have good food.

I use the website Condé Nast Traveler, it’s a really up market magazine and it’s worldwide and it’s really an aspirational magazine, if I wanted to save up and go somewhere nice that’s the magazine I would subscribe to and it covers an awful lot about mini breaks and food. But for somebody who aspires to travel – that’s the magazine.

Best trip; 8 years ago a trip to Australia and New Zeland; part of it in a camper van the rest of it just exploring the country and we had a month to do it. It just really stands out from all the rest. The thing about Australia is that it is really diverse, even between Sydney and Melbourne. They’re two amazing cities but two completely different cities. In terms of the feel and the look. Melbourne is almost Victorian in its feel. The food culture is amazing and it’s a real revelation.

Tips; I would always research. For me, if you’re on a five day break and you don’t research; the idea of stumbling upon somewhere is just so not going to happen. I’m talking mostly about food. But every night has to be somewhere good, and I don’t mean somewhere posh just somewhere good and somewhere people would recommend. My job is researching the holiday; what we’re doing each day and leave a couple of gaps.

I think my most memorable trip ever would be in Sydney where I had made a booking for a restaurant Tet Zues. I booked it four or five months before and he was world famous. We had eaten in a few places and were tired of it so we cancelled it and we said what will we do. And they had this open air cinema in Sydney, overlooking a harbor. We sat up in these raised seats got really nice food, a bottle of wine and the screen just came out of the water. Even though we cancelled that amazing restaurant we ended up eating chicken wraps and driving two bottles of sauvignon blanc and a brilliant film in the most amazing environment. That one time we were spontaneous and we asked someone local and they told us that this open air cinema was open and it only opened for three or four months in the summer and it was utterly amazing. And behind that was the Sydney harbour bridge.

For luxury hotels in the sunny South east counties of Wexford and Waterford, check out;

Waterford Castle	Whites of Wexford	Kellys Resort	Dunbrody