The Athlone chef turning Irish food into an unlikely success story in Shanghai

The entrance on Yanping Road, in the heart of Shanghai’s restaurant and bar district near the Jing’an Temple, is discreet to the point of being unprepossessing and you need to walk up the stairs and along a corridor to enter. But at 6pm on Saturday, the wood-panelled room is filled with diners, some of them perched around the rectangular bar with its harp-shaped Guinness tap.

This is Yeats, which describes itself as a modern Irish bistro and has become an established part of Shanghai’s fine-dining scene since it opened a year ago.

The decor is evocative of a library, with portraits of WB Yeats and shelves of books, although one wall is entirely filled with wine bottles and the youngish crowd are making plenty of noise.

Curt Evans, a 38 year old from Athlone who is the restaurant’s founder and executive chef, says he and his team put a lot of effort into getting the atmosphere right.

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“We really want it to feel authentic and when you walk in: it shouldn’t feel stuffy either. I want it to feel almost like a bar or pub, but like a bar in somewhere like the Shelbourne,” he says. Not like your standard overseas “Irish bar”, in other words.

“Don’t get me wrong, I like those places, of course,” Evans is quick to add. “But that’s not what it is ... People always ask me in the restaurant, where would you recommend to have a Guinness in Shanghai? And I always say, for one or two, I would personally go to Yeats. But if I wanted 10, I would go to somewhere like the Tipsy Fiddler and I would have a great time.”

Evans studied culinary arts at the former Athlone Institute of Technology (AIT), now the Technical University of the Shannon, and culinary innovation and food product development at Cathal Brugha Street in Dublin. While he was studying, he worked in restaurant kitchens in Athlone, including the Locke, the Left Bank Bistro and Thyme under John Coffey.

“I think I took most of my influence really from working in Thyme and from working under John, and the importance of the locality of the ingredients,” he says.

[ Thyme restaurant review: Is this the best Sunday lunch in Ireland?Opens in new window ]

Evans was giving some lectures at AIT when he was offered a one-year post at the college’s partner school in Hefei, the capital of China’s Anhui province. With a population of 10 million people, Hefei is regarded as a small city in China but when he arrived aged 29 in 2017, Evans found it exciting to be there.

Yeats, which describes itself as a modern Irish bistro, has become an established part of Shanghai’s fine-dining scene since it opened a year ago. Photograph: Brando Shanghai

“I liked it and I felt similarities between Athlone and Hefei, which is kind of the centre of the country if we consider the east coast as the most prominent part of the country,” he says.

“It’s close to all of the major cities and the people are really down to earth. It’s a very friendly place, so I felt at home but I also felt the excitement of a big city and the possibility of doing a bit of business if I wanted to.”

[ The Gloss: An Insider’s Guide to ShanghaiOpens in new window ]

Evans won a contract to run a restaurant at a university in Hefei and opened a small restaurant in the city but he wanted to operate on a bigger scale and, as the most cosmopolitan city in mainland China, Shanghai was the best option. He conceived Yeats as a high-end restaurant in a classical French style with a modern twist and showcasing food from Ireland, something already present in cities like London and New York but unknown in China.

The menu features modern bistro takes on bacon and cabbage and colcannon as well as venison croquettes and the most popular item, Guinness and treacle bread. Most of the ingredients are Irish but the head chef is from China’s Sichuan province and the dishes often use Chinese ingredients or techniques to enhance Irish recipes.

Evans is happy with the restaurant’s success in its first year but he is already thinking about his next entrepreneurial project, which could involve branding Irish food products for the Chinese market.

“I believe Irish food deserves its place on the map and I love it,” he says.

“There’s no other reason to do it. The margins are quite thin. But I always say to anybody, if you want to be a chef or a restaurateur, if it’s not a passion project, don’t do it.”