James Gallagher

It’s lovely to be here at Enbarr, James. I’ve been looking at the, at your Instagram stories and so on, and I feel like storytelling is such a big part of Enbarr, and even the name has a great story behind it.

Yes, Enbarr is a mythological horse. Back in Ireland, Enbarr is the Irish word for horse as well. How we got there was because obviously, we were close to the racecourse, and we were on that theme. Then we were doing the renovation, we knocked back a few walls, and we came across the stairs and we discovered horses carved into the stairs of the old staircase, but it had all been behind the wall and didn’t actually know it was all there. We started delving into the whole history of horses and mythology and we thought this would be a great way of combining the history of that and our food and that’s kind of where the name Enbarr came from.

I feel like your story of even coming to be here in this building is a great one as well. It’s a full circle.

I’ve spent most of my Australian life within this building and I now I’ve come back full circle to owning it. That’s why it works so well.

It’s a really beautiful location right on the corner. It’s looks like a classic Australian pub, isn’t it?

It is, and then we have the little nod to Irish pubs in front, with the flowerpots. But it’s a good mix of an Australian pub, hotel, and an Irish pub.

Let’s talk about the food at Enbarr, which is where we’re sitting now. It’s Irish with a modern twist. What does that mean for you?

When we think of Irish food, in general, in Australia, the most common connection is Irish pubs. They have your casseroles, the Irish stews, your pies, those hearty kinds of meals. It’s always been connected with good Irish pub fare. We, as Irish people, have travelled the world and Ireland is a melting pot of restaurants at the minute and it’s not just Irish food, it’s all sorts of food. What is happening now in Ireland is that chefs are looking back to when everything was pickled and foraged and so we are going back to the earth and the soils and infusing smoke and bringing in those elements to elevate the food beyond traditional pub fare. That’s what Enbarr is. It’s not fine dining. It’s upper casual dining. It’s elevated. It is making a point of difference and retraining the mind. People come with the expectation that it’s going to be gimmicky food, but it’s actually not. It’s more of refined. Every dish is thought through. Every dish has a theme and a story .

Can you just give me some examples of those dishes?

The salmon of Knowledge is a cured gin salmon. We cure the salmon in Drumshanbo Gin over a couple of days, right here in-house. It’s not like the smoked salmon you buy in the shop, this is done entirely by us. The idea comes from the Irish legend of the Salmon of Knowledge. In the story, a young Fionn mac Cumhaill is tasked with cooking a magical salmon that contains all the wisdom in the world. While the fish is cooking, Fionn burns his thumb on the hot skin and instinctively puts his thumb in his mouth. In that moment, all the knowledge and wisdom of the salmon pass to him. Each dish has a connection to Irish mythology.

I love that. What’s the best way for people to approach the menu to get a real sense of that?

We have some entrées that we advise sharing, and we always advise people to have the soda bread. They come as a small little loaf, very traditional food back in Ireland, but everyone has one of them. We would advise sharing an entrée, or bigger tables could share a couple. But then everyone has a main and then you share sides. The sides are creamy mash, gratin potato, vegetables. The are like the Irish hearty food. As main courses, you’ve got the Bull of Cooley which has caramelised beef fat king brown mushroom, stow cooked onion puree, jus. It is a very wintery food, and it all really goes well together. We’ve got the Oisin’s Sunday Banquet. The dish is inspired by Irish mythology. Oisín was a warrior poet who once went on a journey and met a woman who brought him to Tír na nÓg, a kind of fantasy land. In these stories, after warriors returned from battle, they would gather for feasts, and one of the traditional dishes mentioned is often referred to as “Oisín’s Feast.” It is crispy chicken breast served with buttery mash, chicken fat rusted potato fondant, rosemary and thyme stuffing, heirloom carrots and finished with a roast chicken jus. It is definitely that Irish style of homely hearty food, but not just your average roast dinner.

The fitout is really beautiful as well. It’s very muted colours. Are the walls green or is that grey?

They are actually green. Everything in here is pretty much brand new. We wanted it to be elevated and not to be that cliche Irish restaurant, but with subtle nods to Enbarr.

It’s really beautiful. It’s quite muted, but natural and sophisticated. These light sconces, do they represent rocks?

I liked the look of them and thought they looked like a like a solstice, or an eclipse. The room is such a lovely room when it gets completely dark. It’s lovely during the day, but nighttime, the atmosphere in here is unreal.

What is happening now in Ireland is that chefs are looking back to when everything was pickled and foraged and so we are going back to the earth and the soils and infusing smoke and bringing in those elements to elevate the food beyond traditional pub fare. That’s what Enbarr is. It’s not fine dining. It’s upper casual dining. It’s elevated. It is making a point of difference and retraining the mind. People come with the expectation that it’s going to be gimmicky food, but it’s actually not. It’s more of refined. Every dish is thought through. Every dish has a theme and a story .

James Gallagher, Enbarr

Tell me about the storytelling event.

We call it Rekindling. Rekindling is a night we have in here on a Wednesday every month, it’s basically a storytelling night. People come up and tell a story. Each night we have a theme and we get some speakers to come up and tell a story on that theme. It goes on for about two hours and it’s a really good way for people who have been very nervous to get up and tell their story. But then you’ve got a room of people that really want to hear a story and really embrace what they person is saying and they have got a lot out of it. The first night it was hard to get a few speakers up and running. Now we’ve got a long list of people who want to tell a story and those who want to come and hear stories. It’s really good. That ties in with the whole Irish storytelling. We do like talk a lot. It’s not just for Irish, a lot of locals come as well. It’s gaining attraction now and it is really good.

We were saying this before we started recording that people are really crying out for stories these days, and to have a sense of belonging and community, and I think those kinds of evenings create that feeling.

They want to come out. People want something to do when they go out now. It’s alright to catch up at a pub or restaurant with a friend, but when people go out now, they want even more memorable nights and that’s why these the nights are getting more popular. It’s definitely something that we’ve noticed across all our venues. At the other bar, the trivia is flying. It’s not just rocking up and have a bite to eat and a few drinks. It’s got to be more than that. People want more value for money as well.

Was this building always an Irish pub?

This was formally called the Palace Hotel, back in 1930s. Then in 1990, they turned it into an Irish pub called The Quiet Man. They brought a bar out from Dublin, and we salvaged part of it to use in the front bar. You probably wouldn’t get away with it these days, but back then, transport was cheap and bringing it out would be fine. You could find plenty of carpenters to put it together. But nowadays it’s not as easy as that and everything’s getting expensive. But they did fair effort to do it then.

You’re a trained chef, but you have a head chef here, Declan McGovern. What’s your role?

Declan is Irish and so we have ideas of what we want in terms of the food and Declan’s very a very good reader of what we actually want and understands what we talk about and is great at putting it on a plate. He comes with ideas too, but it’s great to actually have someone like that, who can understand what we want and work with us, and again, work with the front house team as well.

That’s right. You come from a really beautiful part of the world, Ireland, and you started your chef life at 16.

I started in the kitchen washing dishes. I wasn’t there for too long before I was thinking, what are those guys in the white jackets doing? I jumped in and started giving them a hand at weddings and started cooking and it went from there.

And that was in Navan?

Navan, County Meath, the royal county.

I was near there in the nineties staying in Malahide. I went on a tour of the Guinness factory and got a pint of Guinness at the end, which I don’t think I was as much into then, perhaps, as I might be now.

Guinness is growing amongst younger people. There are a lot more younger people drinking Guinness now than there ever was. I wouldn’t have drunk Guinness when I was younger, definitely not, even as an Irishman. But even here, I’ve noticed on St. Patrick’s Day, we had quite a busy pub and a lot of the local young Aussies were embracing Guiness. We have it on tap there.

Is it Irish Guinness?

It is. It’s brewed here. It is not bad. It’s the closest we’ve got. We brought in our taps from Ireland. They’re a double Guinness tap. That all helps with the pour. We go through quite a few barrels a week. So, someone likes it.

Just going back to you, you started off in the kitchen and you saw what the chefs were doing. What appealed to you about that?

I liked that lifestyle. I liked that you weren’t set to certain days, it wasn’t Monday to Friday. It was flexible. I liked the culture of the kitchen. It really suited me. I loved the teamwork, the camaraderie, and just learning about the food. I don’t think I initially had a real interest in it, I probably was just good at it and I worked at a few places. It was only when I came to Australia and travelled and then went back that I really found a love for it. I was 22 at the time. Even though I’d been working the whole way along in catering, it was probably only after I travelled around and worked to a few restaurants in Australia, I realised there was so much more in all these other places. That’s when I really fell in love with it. I went back and worked in Navan in a restaurant called Zucchinis. We opened it and it has won plenty of awards since then. My boss at the time, Paul McCullagh, he taught me a lot. Every week we used to go to the farms and learn about the herbs and the next week we’d go somewhere else to the markets. It wasn’t the mundane. And then I came back out to Australia, the second time around, and I was the head chef, at The Quiet Man here for about four years. I always wanted a restaurant. And then I realised that there isn’t much money in restaurants. So that’s when we went and opened pubs. But I finally got the restaurant open. It’s it’s something that I’ve always wanted to do. We finally have one.

Congratulations. It is huge. It’s every chef’s dream to have their own restaurant. With all your experience, what does a successful pub or restaurant look like in 2026, do you think?

If your hair isn’t going grey, it’s quite good. Building a good team, having good staff. Obviously profits where it’s at, but at the same time, we’re not about that, we’re about satisfaction. As long as you can have the business run and as long as everyone has a bit of a good home life as well, so that everyone isn’t working all the time, they have a good balanced lifestyle, that’s the key. Hospitality is a hard game in Melbourne at the minute. But having a team that is happy and everyone gets on well, that’s that’s exactly where it’s at.

I worked front of house for quite a few years, when I was younger. I was just talking to someone recently about how often there’s a divide between front of house and back of house. And how it’s really important that there isn’t a divide. There should be a harmony between the two, it makes at a better experience for everybody.

That’s where Declan comes in. When we have a chat, he has both teams involved. It’s not just with the chefs. The key is the chef coming out and teaching staff about the dishes and the process and why we’re doing this. You don’t want that split.

What brought you to Australia?

I actually originally had a job in America, in a restaurant, up in New York, and that fell through last minute. I had my bags packed, I told everyone I was leaving, so I thought I’d better go somewhere. There was a bit of an influx of people to Australia at the time. I just said, I’ll just go there and give it a go for a year. I was here for a year, working in a few different places around here, Melbourne, Cairns, Sydney. I did my year, I wanted to go home, and I was offered a chance to stay a couple of times and I thought I was happy with the year, that’s what I had in my head. But the minute I landed in Ireland, I regretted it. I never settled back there. I was back there about three years, and I spent two years of that looking to get a visa to come back out, but I had already used it up. When I came back out, I came out on a holiday, but I packed all my bags and my knives and left that at home. I came out on a holiday just to see if I could get work and be sponsored. I walked into The Quiet Man and pretty much got offered a sponsorship that day. I called my mother and said, send the knives and uniforms. She wasn’t too happy about it, but I think it was the right decision.

You have a few different venues.

Yeah. Jimmy O’Neill’s and Naughty Nancy’s in St. Kilda.

Do you spread yourself over all three?

I have a business partner, Zenita, and then I’ve got an operations team that are very good and hands-on. We divide and conquer. We know we can’t be everywhere all the time, but there are certain days, probably once a week, when we’re all in the same room. We do catch up at meetings all the time.

Do you still get on the tools?

Oh, I love to do it. We do a lot of catering as well. It’s good to get involved with that side of things because it doesn’t stretch the team in the venue, so I get involved there. But I love getting stuck into the kitchen at Enbarr, more so with the restaurant. The pub has chefs in place, but the restaurant I feel needs a bit more guidance of what we actually want. That’s why I’m more involved in there. We’ve got a good team of chefs in there.

You’ve had a lot of different experiences and here and in Ireland, what would your advice be to a young person starting out as a chef?

I think starting as a chef, if you really do enjoy it, you need to say you want to get involved, show interest. I think sometimes hospitality can be tough, and if you’re not happy in a role, you really want to learn, and you’re not learning, and you’re just in the same mundane thing, maybe move on to find somewhere that you’ll appreciate. I guarantee if you found someone, an owner like myself, they would embrace someone that wants to learn and they would be more than happy to teach you. It’s becoming more and more rare. If you’re not happy, move on to the place you’re happy with. Starting off as a chef these days, the conditions are a lot better than they were when I started off. And I was happy. There’s obviously an old school mentality and you have to break the thought cycle, especially becoming an owner. One of the biggest things I’ve had to learn is that everyone’s not built the same. Look for the really good venues out there that appreciate their staff. Find one that you like and you’ll learn what you want to learn.

Enbarr, 271 Racecourse Road, Kensington