A GROUP of chefs with nine Michelin stars between them visited West Cork last week to see first-hand how local suppliers are working to provide the best quality premium produce to the continent.

The Chef’s Irish Beef Club (CIBC) is Bord Bia’s network of leading European chefs who act as ambassadors for Irish beef.

Members are selected chefs who actively use and promote Irish beef in their restaurants, helping position it as a high quality, premium, grassfed product.

The club works mainly through curated experiences such as farm visits, producer meetings and tasting sessions, allowing chefs to understand Irish production, sustainability and provenance directly. 

While beef tends to be the focus, this year the group also visited Shellfish Ireland in Castletownbere to sample Ireland’s coastal food culture and seafood production, as well as local companies like Clonakilty Food Co, Five Farms Irish Cream and Clonakilty Distillery.

The trip brought together 17 chefs from France and Belgium who went out on the water with fishermen to see where their produce comes from.

‘The weather was totally against us,’ Ryan Murphy, retail sales manager at Shellfish Ireland said, ‘but to be fair, they came out and we were on the boat for about two hours and it was rolling but they braved it.’

Germain Milet, Board Bia, Carol Harrington, ceo Shellfish Ireland, chef Stéphane Grulois, chef Pierre Teyant, Ryan Murphy, retail sales manager of Shellfish Ireland, Richard Murphy, director of Shellfish (Photos: Anne Marie Cronin Photography)

Showing chefs exactly what fishermen go through on a daily basis can help both businesses like Shellfish Ireland and customers on the continent who get to sample Irish produce on menus. ‘The chefs see exactly the hardship that fishermen have to go through to get their catch,’

Ryan said. ‘It helps them appreciate the effort that goes into getting crab meat onto the continent, and they also see things like how many pots you have to haul to get crabs and even how there’s a whole process to getting the meat out of the crabs too.’

Exports are crucial to many suppliers across the country and Shellfish Ireland are no different.

‘60% of our business is exports. We do 20% into the restaurants in Ireland and 20% into retail in Ireland but over the last few years Bord Bia have become more involved in promoting Irish food abroad and a lot of these chefs buy our crab meat through food service channels that we supply into France.’

From small beginnings, Shellfish Ireland has grown from a local restaurant fish supplier into one of Ireland’s leading processors of crab and shrimp.

Founded in 1987 by two young fishermen, Richard Murphy – Ryan’s father – and Peter O’Sullivan Greene, the company is now one of the biggest employers in West Cork, having recently completed a €500,000 investment aimed at expanding sales and providing consumers a wider variety of high quality, value-added seafood products.

‘Last year we turned over €16million, so we’re up over 10 percent and the aim is to continue that growth again this year,’ Ryan said.

‘We employ about 130 people locally and support fishermen all the way up to Galway and down the coast as far as Waterford. There would be about 200 fishermen there that have a crewman alongside them so that’s about 400 extra people supporting us too.’