Read: Irish Examiner | Paradiso found in three decades of cooking

First published in the Irish Examiner on 26 May 2023.

Becoming a vegetarian in the 1980s shaped Denis Cotter’s life. It introduced him to a world of food and cooking that led directly to him opening Paradiso, Ireland’s most renowned vegetarian restaurant. Earlier this month, Cotter launched a new book – his fifth – and Paradiso: Recipes & Reflections is a thoughtful record of the evolution of an establishment that has concentrated on delicious, vegetable-focused food for the last thirty years.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

“I became a vegetarian when I was living in Dublin in the early 80s,” says the Macroom-born Cotter. “It was just part of the kind of left field culture at the time. It seemed like there was a post-punk alternative scene that incorporated a lot of anti-nuclear, anti-establishment thinking that included vegetarianism, concern for animals and the environment. We took on bits of all of those things. Some people took on more than others. For me, that one [vegetarianism] stuck and it seemed to fit me.”

At the time Cotter was working in a shirt-and-tie establishment job: he was a junior inspector in the internal audit department of a bank. He lived in Dublin but was on the road for most of the time, working in towns from Kiltimagh to Coleraine and staying in staying in guest houses and hotels around the country. During the week, it wasn’t easy to be vegetarian – “I would often eat fish out of necessity” – but back in Dublin at weekends he was able to explore the vegetarian food scene there.

“There were good restaurants and shops and you could buy anything you wanted.” This was the era when popular wholefood restaurants Blazing Salads and Cornucopia, which are still thriving, were established by vegetarian pioneers. One of Cotter’s favourite spots was Bananas Natural Foods Restaurant, a self-service vegetarian spot on Upper Stephens Street which had opened in 1982. “It was legendary and very influential,” remembers Cotter. “[Bananas] was a really cool mix of health food and creative veggie cooking.”

When he wasn’t eating out, he was experimenting in his own kitchen. “Because I was a vegetarian, I had to learn to cook and I couldn’t cook by doing what other people in the shared house were doing. I had to learn my own way of cooking and I came to really enjoy it, the whole process of playing around with food, from shopping to preparing to trying different foods together. In the same way as being a vegetarian fitted me, so did cooking.”

“It was a very weird life,” says Cotter. “On the road [for the bank] and in the office during the day, I had a certain set of clothes. Back in Dublin I was a different person, I dressed differently and lived with different people.” He decided to leave the bank “and part of that process was figuring out what else I could do. I wanted to do something that I felt passionate about but didn’t know what that was. Somewhere along the way, from eating out in restaurants and learning to cook for myself, I thought ‘I’m a vegetarian, I love to cook. I want to get into the restaurant business.’”

At the age of 25, with no professional cooking experience, he headed off to London, quickly acquiring a bedsit and job in legendary vegetarian restaurant Cranks. “I started with clearing tables and serving at the counter then I got into the kitchen.” Employing a mainly transient work staff of young people from Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, there was room for rapid progression at Cranks. “Six months later, I was running the kitchen, which was a very tight, well-organised system and that stood to me for a long time.”

The food Cotter was turning out was what he calls standard vegetarian fare of the time: “traybakes, rice dishes, salads and quiches. It was dairy and egg-heavy. Lots of vegetables, freshly prepared. It was good rich fresh food, very satisfying.”

After a year and a half in Cranks, Cotter spent time in New Zealand which he credits with introducing him to seasonality. “It was the first time I came across seasonal eating. In New Zealand at the time, they didn’t really import food. Eating seasonally was part of the culture and it was instinctive. That was just what you did. It wasn’t an intellectual exercise.” During his time in New Zealand, he honed his kitchen skills: “what I was doing there was a whole pile of domestic booking, and eating cookbooks. I had dinner parties all the time, learning and practising – I didn’t know for what – but I had a compulsion to do as much cooking as possible and to get good at it.”

Cotter’s interest in seasonal cooking was one that made Paradiso stand out from the start. It’s hard to remember now, but when the restaurant – known for many years as Café Paradiso – opened in 1993, seasonality, and vegetables in general, just weren’t a priority. In his 2003 book Paradiso Seasons, Cotter wrote that “the menu responds to the ebb and flow of the vegetables through the year.” It has always been so, as he moved from sourcing from growers to collaborating with them. This close chef-farmer partnership was celebrated on the international stage in 2019 when Paradiso and Ultan Walsh of Gort Na Nain won the prestigious Big Plate Collaboration of the Year award at the World Restaurant Awards in Paris.

The cooking at Paradiso was also a deliberate step away from the vegetarian food that Cotter had made at establishments like Cranks and during his four-year tenure in Cork’s Quay Co Op: he actively avoided pulses and brown rice and concentrated on showcasing vegetables in season. This sophisticated, imaginative cooking, combined with creative flavour combinations – that iconic turnip and mushroom galette, a pumpkin seed chocolate chilli mole which is a perennial favourite – have stood the test of time. Although Paradiso has long transcended its roots to become a much-loved food institution, Cotter thinks that vegetarianism was what gave him his niche in the restaurant world. “I don’t think it would have been possible if I hadn’t been a vegetarian. I wouldn’t have taken the time to train properly. I wouldn’t have had anything unique. Now people talk about USP. I wasn’t conscious of that at the time, but it did give me an edge.”

It’s not easy to maintain that edge over three decades years but Paradiso has done so, quietly putting out plate after plate of memorable, delicious vegetable-based food. “I knew I could open a restaurant, because I was only trying to open my restaurant,” says Cotter. “When you create something unique, you’re the only expert.”

Paradiso, published by Nine Bean Rows (€39), a collection of recipes and reflections by Denis Cotter is available at ninebeanrowsbooks.com and at Paradiso (paradiso.restaurant).