Chapter One chef Mickael Viljanen: ‘I was meant to stay in Ireland for a year and that’s 24 years ago’

Mickael Viljanen has been in Ireland for 24 years. Having met his wife and had four children here, there is even a distinct trace of a soft midlands accent as we chat over coffee in his restaurant on Parnell Square in Dublin 1. Since his arrival in 2000 the Finnish chef has risen to the highest levels of his profession on the world stage, becoming one of just four chefs in Ireland to be awarded two Michelin stars. He earned those stars in his first Dublin restaurant The Greenhouse, on Dawson Street, and then rocked the Irish restaurant scene in 2021 by moving almost overnight to one-star Michelin restaurant Chapter One on Parnell Square in Dublin 1. There he teamed up with then chef-owner Ross Lewis to form a business partnership and create Chapter One by Mickael Viljanen.
“It has been an incredible opportunity. I was turning 40 at the time, and Ross said, do you want to do this? It was a huge thing for Ross, after a 29-year career in this restaurant, to step aside. Looking at it now, if I hadn’t had him in the background helping, then it just would have been too much for me keeping on top of everything. He’s been very important on the business side of things; he’s been superb.”
Under the Michelin awards system, Viljanen could not carry his two stars from The Greenhouse with him. But within nine months he had secured the second star at Chapter One. It’s a high stakes business attaining and retaining Michelin stars – does it preoccupy him?
“In your youth you are very eager, and trying to prove yourself left, right and centre. You try to do a million things. And then the penny drops one day, you realise that it is often when things are more simple, it’s better produce. Simple things can be very complex – simplex, if you like. And bit by bit, you learn.”
In 2015 the first star came, followed by a second in 2019. He recalls recently his former kitchen colleague Mark Moriarty (TV chef and current Irish Times food writer) said to him: “It was one thing getting the two stars, but getting two stars out of those premises …”. That was the real achievement, says Viljanen. “We had no back door so all deliveries came through the front door. The kitchen was tiny. Logistically it was not an easy place.”
Growing up in the industrial city of Pori on Finland’s west coast, Viljanen learned early about food provenance. As a boy of eight he shot ducks, geese, pheasants. Collecting mushrooms, chanterelles, ceps, summer berries was commonplace – both at school and at home. With his mum and dad working, his grandad would look after him after school. An early food memory is of getting wild salmon from the market and cooking it with false morel mushrooms.
“They were just creamed and often the wild salmon was put in a hot smoker and you’d have it with boiled new potatoes. It was like having bangers and mash now, not luxury by any means.”
Had he always harboured dreams of a career in cooking? “I guess I did. I did quite well in school but not for reasons of study – that was never my thing. I remember they rang my mom and said, ‘Why are all his choices catering college instead of studying something decent?’ My mom just said, ‘Leave him be.’”
When he was 14 he worked weekends cleaning up in a nightclub in a local hotel. “It was the best thing in the world at that time. If you were lucky, you found 20 quid on the floor, or a pack of fags, and you might get a beer at the end of it as well.”
After catering college he ended up in England for a bit but it was expensive and he really wanted to be in London. He went back to Finland where a chance encounter changed the course of his life.
“In 2000 I was in a pub in my home city, an Irish bar, and a guy beside me called Liam was over studying physiotherapy in Finland. He just said go to Ireland. His mom was a restaurant manager in a hotel [in Athlone] and four days later, I hopped on the plane just on a whim. I was meant to stay here for a year and that’s 24 years ago.”
After Athlone a period working with Paul Flynn at the Tannery in Co Waterford moved his skills up several notches. From there he went to Gregan’s Castle in the Burren, Co Clare, for five years: “That was the first place I really had a crack at it. I thought, yeah, I’m gonna go for this [a Michelin star].”
While he loved the place, he found it remote and bleak in winter. When Eamon O’Reilly offered him a 40-seater restaurant in Dublin, he moved in 2012. Three years later, the first star came. Of course he says it doesn’t happen for him alone, it couldn’t be done back then without a good team, and the same applies today. Forty people are currently employed at Chapter One, covering 60 seats. What does he look for in the people he finds to work with him?
“I want people who want to go places – you can teach people like that absolutely anything. I want them to come here and be better than I am. And I want them to learn it’s a business – it took me a long time to learn that. Because you just look at it with blinkers on and it’s all food, food, food. But if it’s not financially viable, there is no dream.”
Viljanen has attracted great talent, many of whom have gone on to greater things. Mark Moriarty, for one, who in 2015 was awarded San Pellegrino world young chef of the year while working with Viljanen; Ciaran Sweeney (formerly Forest and Marcy, now running the Olde Glen in Donegal); Keelan Higgs of Michelin-starred Variety Jones in Dublin; and Ahmet Dede of Dede Restaurant in Baltimore, Co Cork, which was awarded a second Michelin star last year.
Dede, he says, is the most exciting cook in Ireland right now. “He cooks Turkish food using not only Turkish techniques, he uses French techniques to cook certain things, but it’s so distinctly him. Nobody is doing what he’s doing.”
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This gets us on to other restaurants and where he likes to eat. For Indian food he favours Sunil Ghai’s Pickle on Camden Street. For Chinese it’s Kevin Hui’s China Sichuan in Sandyford every time. His favourite Sunday lunch in Ireland is in Thyme in Athlone. He has known John Coffey down there a long time, though he adds that Carton House in Maynooth is also doing an excellent Sunday lunch under Adam Nevin in the Morrison Room. He’s partial to an occasional carvery too, on the basis that “there’s nothing better than a loin of pork, a bit of stuffing and a pint of cider sometimes”.
His real preference is for trying new food overseas. “I tend to go big on my holidays. I might eat in four, five, six different top end places when I go abroad. You need to eat out a lot, you need to travel, you need to go to better places than you are. If you learn one thing it was worth it – it could be on a table, it could be on a plate, but you learn when you eat.”
On a trip to Hong Kong in July he visited European French, Italian and Asian restaurants. “I had the best piece of suckling pig I ever had in my life in a place called Moon Bay – the crackling was lacquered using Chinese wine in a wood-fired oven.” Back home in Kildare, he rarely cooks – at best, once a month. His wife does the lion’s share (he finds there’s a lot more cleaning up at home).
When we meet it’s the day after the budget and Viljanen is unimpressed by how little has been done for the restaurant trade. “Ingredients are going up 20 to 30 per cent, chocolate is up 150 per cent, nothing is coming down. Your VAT rate is back up from 9 per cent to 13.5 per cent. That’s 4.5 per cent of your food turnover you hand away.”
Meanwhile labour costs are up too and an additional €4,000 energy support grant (or €77 a week) will hardly make a dent for many small businesses. He points to the labour-intensive nature of the kitchen where they make all the stocks and sauces on the premises, and bake the breads twice a day, fresh for lunch and dinner.
“We’re lucky enough to be busy. You look at the suburbs and the countryside, which doesn’t have access to the corporate market like we do? When all that burden is put on them, suddenly there is nothing left, there is no 13.5 per cent to take because there are no businesses. You can see the speed that restaurants are closing at. I think a more long-sighted view should have been taken by government.”
Viljanen believes that with the right support there is a big opportunity for Ireland around food tourism. “Ireland is such a different place to what it was 15 years ago. Look at the amount of amazing restaurants here now. I remember my first meal here was chicken breasts wrapped in bacon and served with Baileys sauce. It was awful. Now, from simple street food to middle market to top end there is something for everybody, but it may not be there if it’s not being supported.”
Irish produce is among the best in the world – dairy, shellfish, meat, fish. “Look at Italy and France. There’s a pride and massive food heritage in those countries. That’s what you want to build here. It might cost (government) a little bit of money in the short run, but in the long run it will pay dividends, because the opportunities are immense. It’s just supporting the whole system and making it profitable for people to make a living out of it.”
Following the recent closures of globally acclaimed restaurants, including Le Gavroche in London and Noma in Copenhagen (to develop a ‘lab kitchen’), is he concerned about the future of fine dining? “The top end – top 5 per cent – of restaurants are going to become exceedingly rare and more expensive. People are paying for an experience where the cost of the produce and the personnel is constantly going up. That will show up in the bill. It’s not that we drop the VAT and everything’s going to be okay. It doesn’t work like that.”
His biggest concern is the impact of these pressures on quality, and how the customer has to understand this. “You can’t just start buying bad produce – your standards go out the window and then you don’t have customers. You need to charge relative to your product and what you do. Cheap and value are two very different things, and are so often confused. Something very expensive can be great value, and it’s for people to judge what’s value for them and what they appreciate in life.”
Lunch and dinner at Chapter One start at €85 and €160 per person, while a tasting lunch menu is €145 and tasting dinner menu is €190 (for matching wines add €105).
Who has he enjoyed cooking for the most? “I actually love cooking for the people looking forward to it, really taking it in, and loving it. It’s a special treat, and you want them to leave thinking, ‘that was worth the money’.” Though he admits to being chuffed when Nathan Followill (drummer with Kings of Leon) posted a very complimentary tweet after a recent visit.
When it comes to social media platforms, Viljanen understands the instant marketing value of Instagram and TikTok, but would be equally happy too for it all to disappear. “I think sometimes it would do the world of good for people to put the phone down, have a chat with who they are sitting with, have a decent glass of wine and eat your dinner and don’t worry about the photos. The spirit of restaurants is to kick back and enjoy and laugh.”
And that third Michelin Star, is that always front of mind? He admits any restaurant as serious about food as Chapter One is will be thinking about it. “I think the day when you don’t want to be better and it becomes a chore is the day when you should be thinking about wrapping it all up.” But he has learned it’s folly to chase stars too. It comes about bit by bit, “a chain of a million marginal improvements. To get consistency it needs to be gradual.”
“I remember years ago an inspector said to me ‘if your punters love it, there’s a good chance we do as well’. And I think that’s the most important thing. Because respectfully, however great Michelin is for business, the everyday punter pays our bill … we’re here for them.”