When Adam Nevin was growing up in Maynooth he would occasionally be brought to Carton House for a night as a treat. He’s recalling those childhood first impressions of this grand north Kildare property as we sit in the otherwise empty Morrison Room. In the evenings Nevin runs a fine-dining restaurant here. Last February The Morrison Room at Carton House was anointed with its first star at the UK and Ireland Michelin awards in Glasgow. With hopes high that a star might be on the cards, the entire kitchen staff flew over and waited in a nearby pub. Nevin says he cried a lot that day. “We all did.” It was a full-circle moment for the man from Maynooth.
Daylight is spilling in from the windows and glancing off the damask walls and Lafranchini brothers’ stuccowork in the sumptuous Morrison Room. There are portraits here of huntsmen, echoes of the past inhabitants. “I used to be walking these rooms as a child, thinking about ghosts and stuff,” recalls Nevin of the place where the Duke and Duchess of Leinster once lived, a mansion visited twice by Queen Victoria. Outside the windows lies the 18th-century rose garden, where the children of the duchess, Lady Emily – she had 23 altogether – would be left to play while she and her husband entertained guests. “I remember being here, looking up at the ceilings as a child, thinking I’d never seen anything like it.”
These Bridgertonesque rooms and gardens are now his workplace, just minutes from where he still lives in the family home. His childhood awe remains. “I still find myself looking up, always seeing something new,” he says. He is 30 now. That Michelin star was 15 years in the making. He began dreaming about it as a teenager, working in the Maynooth cafe Twist, which has since closed and where he started off washing dishes.
His earliest childhood food memories are of “dippy eggs” made by his maternal grandmother, Josie. The soundtrack to this was the music of his guitar-mad grandad Patsy. Nevin’s parents were barely out of their teens when he was born, so his first six years were spent with his grandparents and mother in her family home. She worked in a chemist. His dad was a carpenter. Later his father built a home for the family in Josie’s sprawling back garden.
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Adam was always involved with the family’s meals. “I’d be baking with my nanny or helping make the cooked breakfast at the weekend. I’d make birthday cakes. I just always remember food being central,” he says.
School was less of a focus. He was “a messer”, a bit of a wild child. When asked if he was ever suspended from school, he has to think. Perhaps. He can’t be sure. What he knows for certain is that he had no time for maths or Irish, drawn instead to Gordon Ramsay and other chefs, dreaming, as he washed dishes in the cafe or rustled up risottos for his family, of one day being a Michelin-starred chef.
Twist cafe was owned by a friend of his father. He was 14 or 15 when he first walked into the kitchen. “It felt like my foot in the door, my start,” he says. “I wanted to learn. I was keen.” This was the start of his real education. He didn’t like onions back then, but Gavin, the chef, used to force the young apprentice to taste them. Exposure therapy. “He’d make me something and ask, ‘Did you like it?’ and when I said yes he’d say, ‘Well, guess what was in it?’. He made me like onions.” Nevin smiles at the memory. His only remaining dislike is liver. “Too iron-y,” he says. He spent four years in Twist, and by the end of his tenure he was making broccoli purées to go with the beef bourguignon. “The other chefs were pushing me, saying if I really wanted to do it I should go work in some of the best places.”
So that’s what he did. He spent a few months in Ballymaloe in Co Cork as an intern, working with the Allen family. He learned a lot there. “About where food comes from, the whole farm-to-fork thing,” he says. “They are lovely people.” After that it was up to Dublin for a trial at The Saddle Room in the Shelbourne Hotel, where he was asked to make a hollandaise sauce. The sauce wasn’t much good but he hit it off with the chef, Andy Nolan, who, in a very Irish coincidence, used to work on building sites with Adam’s father. This connection sealed the deal and he started there as a demi chef.
It was a struggle at first but this is a pattern with Nevin, you discover. When he starts any job, he puts his head down and grafts hard until what was once difficult becomes second nature. By the time he left The Saddle Room he was a commis chef, easily managing the meat section on his own. It was time for the next challenge.
London was a culture shock. “It was my first time there,” he says. “I remember walking around Berkeley Square, kind of being a bit lost.” On that eye-opening trip he did a trial for Alyn Williams at The Westbury in Mayfair. He got there at 7.30am and worked in the kitchen until after midnight. He was offered a job. “And then I went home. I remember, I had to get a bus to Luton Airport at two o’clock in the morning. I slept on the floor in the airport waiting for the 7am flight.” His mother – he mentions her and his dad a lot, grateful for their unwavering belief in him – was thrilled but sad to see him leave home.
He thrived in Williams’s kitchen, working in every section, including pastry. “Some chefs steer clear of pastry but I think it’s important to do everything.” Inspired by Williams’s Walnut Whip dessert, he created a Snickers dessert there, which has become something of a signature. His next challenge was the kitchen at The Hand and Flower, the two-star Michelin pub in Berkshire made famous by Tom Kerridge. He says it was a different environment to the supportive kitchen of Williams, where chefs felt like equals and there was room to grow. In contrast, Kerridge’s two-star joint sounds more competitive. “I wanted to be worked hard but it was maybe a bit too much,” he says diplomatically of that experience. He lasted a year before reaching a breaking point. “I remember just walking up the road in the morning like, zombie like, feeling like, ‘oh my god, I’m absolutely shattered. Like, how am I going to get through the day?”
The last thing you want to do is go around talking about it. Some chefs do that but it’s not my style
At around that time, he got a call from a former colleague at The Westbury. Tom Booton was setting up The Grill at the Dorchester Hotel in London. Booton had always said that when he had his own place he would come looking for Nevin. It was a big step up. As sous chef Nevin would be second in command, with a team to manage. He had the usual initial struggle but soon found his feet. The restaurant became a favourite of chefs. The newspaper reviews were raves. His Snickers dessert and several other of his dishes went on the menu. He was elevated to head chef. Interestingly, at the same time, the star of fellow Maynoothian Paul Mescal, with whom Nevin played hurling and football as a teenager, was also in the ascendant. After four years in the Dorchester, Nevin’s plan for Michelin-stardom was coming along nicely. Then came a course-altering bicycle accident.
It was a Saturday morning in April 2023. He was cycling to work along Park Lane, one of the busiest roads in the city. “I was bombing it down the road, really going for it, and a car just pulled out in front of me from one of the side streets ... I went straight into the car. It happened in slow motion. I could see the driver’s face, her mouth open, I went into the air and landed directly on my back. I remember trying to drag myself off the road, away from the traffic. I was in serious pain.” He thinks he was lucky it was a Saturday, that traffic was lighter than usual; otherwise he could have been run over as he lay on the road.
Somehow Nevin got himself to work at the Dorchester, where he spent three hours in agony bending over to grab plates. His colleagues eventually persuaded him to go to the hospital so he booked himself a taxi and spent a night on a trolley bed. Scans revealed he had broken a vertebra in his back. He was told he couldn’t work for two months.
A lot of the time when I’m not in the kitchen, I am in deep thought about dishes I want to create
It was a dark time. He didn’t go home to Ireland because travel was difficult with the back brace he had to wear for recovery. He would get panic attacks on the bus because of the brace. “I wasn’t really myself. Don’t get me wrong. I wasn’t in a bad mental state. I’m quite a busy person. I like to be on the go and doing things. My mind’s quite busy.” It was hard to be told, “Just watch telly all day”. He put on weight due to the inactivity and pain medication, something he is still struggling with. “My life revolves around food, so it’s hard.”
After the back injury, it felt like time for another change. “I was proud of what I’d done ... but I wanted to grow and explore something new.” At the same time he heard from his friend Andy Nolan that the Fairmont-managed Carton House in his hometown was looking for a new chef. He arrived for the trial with printed-out menus – “they’d never seen that before at a trial” – wowing management with a spectacular four-course meal. “They gave me the job there and then,” he says. He’s “a mammy’s boy” he says, and his mother was thrilled to have him home.
Nevin’s tasting menu is a sublime experience, from the first crunchy, cheesy canape and the turbot smothered in black truffle to the final flourish of a Valrhona Chocolate Caramelia you will try your best to make room for. He loves a wild-card flavour: pickled coriander seeds in a sauce or szechuan pepper in ice cream. He’s also a generous chef: several of the six courses on the tasting menu also feature bread – pillowy brioche, expertly crafted sourdough focaccia or a milk loaf, in soft rounds. The main course, melt-in-the-mouth wagyu beef, also comes with a potato torte and an exquisite agnolotti pasta dish. When Nevin arrives tableside to sauce the dish – he spoons out two sauces, a tomato hollandaise and a beef jus – he laughs that he sometimes gets given out to “for putting too much on the plate”. He’s a feeder? “Yes, I am. I want to give value.”
He makes sure to chat to every table. It’s part of his dining philosophy. The waiting staff, from Jodie, a young Blanchardstown woman, to sommelier Cosimo, from Florence, are all warm and friendly and very much themselves. Despite the elevated surroundings, there are no snooty airs or graces. “I want it to be a friendly experience. I learned that in London; it’s the most important thing.”
Starting as head chef at The Morrison Room last summer, he kept his Michelin dreams quiet but he knew they were closer than ever. “The last thing you want to do is go around talking about it. Some chefs do that but it’s not my style.” He was quietly ambitious, humble but confident. “In my head, I knew this was the time.” His best friend from childhood, Ramon Fernandez, works in the kitchen with him as sous chef. It keeps him grounded. “He tells me how it is. When I need a kick he gives me one.” When he talks about that day in Glasgow last February, when he got the star, it’s clear what it meant to him. “I could barely eat that day. I couldn’t look at Ramon. My nerves were wrecked. But when I got up there, it felt right. I knew I deserved it. I’d put in the work.”
He still makes dinner – “nothing fancy” – at home the odd time, where he sleeps in his sister’s old childhood bedroom. He’ll make a chicken and mushroom pie with mash and cabbage for his dad. His back still troubles him and some mental scars remain from the accident – once a keen cyclist, he’s rarely on a bike these days. His plan is to return to more active days before the accident. His close family, his loudest cheerleaders, come to Carton House for a Sunday roast every few weeks. He tries to make sure his life is balanced, to make time for friends or family. He’s not in a relationship at the moment. “A lot of the time when I’m not in the kitchen, I am in deep thought about dishes I want to create.”
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He is happy at The Morrison, and delighted to be home, doing what he loves, after nearly nine years away. The dream now is to “keep hold of the star, keep doing what we’re doing. The goal is to make each menu better than the last.” He changes up dishes a lot and likes to keep moving, challenging himself. Dream dinner guest? “Roy Keane,” he says. Maybe Roy Keane and Paul Mescal at the same table? “That would be great,” he says, smiling.
The Michelin Starred Experience at The Morrison Room at Carton House, a Fairmont managed hotel, including overnight accommodation, the tasting menu and breakfast for two people is €720. The two-night experience for two is €920. Adam Nevin’s six-course Signature tasting menu at The Morrison Room is €150
