A NEW culinary venture from the couple behind Pilgrim’s restaurant in Rosscarbery opened its doors this week.

Harnen is Leap’s newest café, deli and provisions shop, run by Mark Jennings and Sadie Pearce.

The first week has been busy, according to Mark.

There have been queues out the door, with locals looking to try a taste of Harnen’s freshly baked goods.

‘We haven’t caught our breath yet!’ Mark said.

The pair are delighted with the support the business has received.

‘Being met with such warmth and support, and just the amount of people coming out has just been amazing,’ said Sadie.

The establishment has already been visited by food guides John and Sally McKenna, who described it as ‘world-class’ on their Substack blog.

The building on the main road in Leap once housed a second hand and antique store and came up for sale while the couple were still running Pilgrim’s in Rosscarbery.

‘When it did come to sale, it popped up a few months before we knew that our lease was ending in Pilgrims’ said Sadie. ‘So, it was almost serendipitous that it came up on our radar.’

That was over three years ago, so Harnen has been a long time in the making.

The remodel from an antique store to a café with a bakery kitchen has taken around 10 months.

The building in Leap before the remodel

By the time I arrive to chat with Mark and Sadie in the afternoon, the pastries and treats have already sold out, but Stone Valley coffee is still being served.

The transition from an evening-hours, sit-down restaurant to an early morning start in the café has been quite a change for Mark and Sadie, but one that felt natural with the progression of their lives.

‘I’ve worked in hospitality since I was a young teenager, and have always done nights,’ Mark said.

‘After, when you have two small kids, you pretty quickly realize that working until 2:00 a.m. isn't very conducive to healthy family life. So, we knew when we were shutting Pilgrims, we wanted to try a day operation.’

I asked if the couple have experienced any challenges in their first week in operation.

‘Managing a crowd!’ Sadie laughed.

‘it's not McDonald's, it's not fast food, it's a slow food, So, it will take slower, because we're not a chain.

‘We're people-led and we're, you know, we want to give everyone a smile and say hello, so it will take a bit longer’

Everything is made in house, from the cinnamon buns to the apple turnovers.

Harnen is using striving to use only Irish flour, and always organic and stone-ground flour, which Mark explained is double the price of the highly processed flour most commonly used in baking

‘It’s better for the gut,’ Sadie added.

‘We're coming from a health point as well. It's not bleached white flour, it's organic, it's better for your body, it's got more nutritional content.’

The name ‘Harnen’ comes from a piece of baking apparatus that was used in pre-industrial Ireland, although it took the owners a little while to find the perfect name for the café.

‘For us, it like was having to name a child again,’ said Sadie. ‘We found it incredibly hard to name the business.’

Sadie’s dad’s partner Pat was a great collector of Irish artefacts, including harnens, and since the couple already planned to hang the harnens on the shop walls, they realized its ethos perfectly matched their mission to promote Irish food history, and decided to name the business after it.

Harnen is open Wednesday to Sunday, 9am to 3.30pm.