Michelin chef Andy McFadden chats about staying calm, surviving Covid and enjoying McDonalds

“I love it,” he enthuses. “I actually love it. It’s not relevant to here because... the kitchen was run down, the drugs and stuff.

“Obviously over in the States there could be places like that, but here it’s just so nice that you’re not going to have the cigarettes and then the place going on fire,” he laughs.

The returning series sees talented young chef Carmen Berzatto (played by Jeremy Allen White) strive to transform his late brother’s Chicago deli from grotty to glamorous — though the fictional establishment known as The Beef is still a long way off the elegance of Glovers Alley by Andy McFadden, some 6,000km away.

Ensconced in the city-centre premises previously occupied by Kevin Thornton and, before that, Conrad Gallagher, the fine dining restaurant earned its first Michelin star last February, marking an incredible comeback from the Covid-19 closures that brought the industry to its knees, and having only opened its doors five years ago.

But Tallaght native Andy makes no bones about the fact that he’s hungry for more.

Sitting down with Magazine+ before a busy Thursday night service, he admits he’s chasing a second star: “To get one gives you power to go on and do more. It gives you a good feeling that you’re at a certain level.

“Maybe it’s because I had it before — I took over L’Autre Pied and Pied à Terre, both were restaurants that had the stars. Don’t get me wrong, it is difficult, but everything was in place.

“Here, I opened this place myself — obviously with someone else’s money — and then probably looked like an idiot for the first couple of years.

"Everything is mine: the name is mine, the staff are mine, the glasses, the cutlery... nothing gets done in the restaurant without me checking it, so there’s obviously pressure there.

“But, as Anthony Joshua, the boxer, says, ‘Pressure is for tyres’. I don’t want to sound big-headed but I can absorb that pressure.

"Honestly, I love it — and I want more and we want more.”

For three years in his 20s, Andy was the youngest Michelin-starred chef in London, as he went from the aforementioned L’Autre Pied to its sister restaurant.

A knife — gifted to him on his first star by Neven Maguire, who he worked under at MacNean House and Restaurant in Co Cavan in younger years — is on display at the hotspot on the second floor of The Fitzwilliam Hotel at St Stephen’s Green.

Yet his rise to culinary superstardom could, in a way, all be down to David Beckham.

“When I was 14, my mom was like, ‘You’re not sitting around the house all summer; ask if your uncle can you get a job,” laughs Andy, now 38.

“She was a chef — I think she gave it up when she had me,” he remembers.

"He was a chef in Luttrellstown Castle at the time, it was just when the Beckhams got married (there). I was obsessed with Beckham, I was like, ‘Yes, I’ll have a job!’

“I got a job as a kitchen porter in the golf club — I loved it. I just loved being in kitchens: the vibe, the atmosphere, the adrenaline — it’s cool. I still love it today.”

He recently helped launch the upcoming Food On The Edge symposium, a global gathering of chefs and foodies about the future of food taking place in Dublin in October, and this year themed ‘Storytelling’.

But Andy — whose late father was also a cook — insists the image of chefs as also being permanently “on the edge” is changing alongside gruelling work practices.

“Huge,” he describes the change he has witnessed over his two-plus decades working in professional kitchens.

“We work with the (hotel’s) HR department here, so that helps us to keep everything in line.

“When we first opened the restaurant it was ridiculous — we were starting at 8am, and when you’re doing too many hours, then you’re going to be more agitated and then you’re going to snap.

"But now, I’m actually able to get nights off.

“It’s to do with the staff,” he explains.

“If these guys are good, you can look after the stuff that you’re supposed to look after.

"They’re a completely young team — they’re all in their 20s.

"I’m the oldest by a mile. They’re all young, they’re all hungry; I think they keep me young.

“In the service, it’s service — we’re serious. But we listen to music in the daytime and when we’re cleaning.

“What I tell them is I start from zero every day, and I try to push myself and then in turn that will push them.

"But they also push (me) and by the end of the day, yeah we’re all exhausted — but we gave everything.”

So he has never gone full Hell’s Kitchen by throwing pots and pans at staff then?

“No, I never have,” insists Andy, despite battling his own demons away from the pressure cooker environment. “Don’t get me wrong, when I was younger, I used to scream and shout a lot, like, I’m not proud of that.

“I took over a Michelin-starred restaurant when I was 25 — it’s not that I couldn’t deal with the pressure but I certainly wasn’t dealing with it in the correct way.

“I couldn’t see that when I was destroying my life and myself, because I fell down a rabbit hole during Covid.

“I gave up alcohol four months ago, and I’m a much better person.

" I’m a much better friend and I’m a much better son and I’m a much better chef — and I’m a much better boss, I think. I’m just sorry that I never did it sooner, to be honest.”

“Maybe they’ll tell you I’m firm but fair,” he circles back to the original question. “(Or that) ‘Oh, Andy loves us too much’ — I do get upset then if they let me down.

“I have bad days as well. When I’m frustrated or I feel like shit, I always say, ‘Take (my) name off the mirror outside, it doesn’t mean anything!’ And they’re like, ‘Oh my God, you’re so dramatic!’ I can be a bit dramatic.”

Find out by asking for a side of chips with the restaurant’s seven-course tasting menu, which includes creative dishes like BBQ squab pigeon and a beet ‘tartare’, he jokes.

Named in honour of the city’s glove-makers, the venue is the home of the fabled ‘Chipgate’, when then-proprietor Kevin Thornton reportedly hit the roof over a customer’s request for a portion of fried spuds with his venison in 2007.

Recalling a similar encounter with an amateur food critic at Glovers Alley, Andy — who is frequently seen pressing the flesh with guests — reveals: “He goes, ‘The pigeon was lovely, 10 out of 10.

"But do you know what really would have made it... just a few chips in the middle. My missus loves chips with her main course.’

“I thought he was joking and I started laughing. I’ve done it for kids and stuff, (but) you’re eating in a fine dining restaurant that’s charging over €100 a head, and you think chips is going to make the meal better?

"How would chips improve that pigeon or this whole experience?

“I love chips — but not in that scenario.”

Visible in his short-sleeved chef’s whites, the ambitious Dubliner is sporting a tattoo on his forearm with a quote from his culinary hero, Anthony Bourdain, which reads: ‘Cook Free or Die’.

Like the renegade chef, who died at 61 in 2018, Andy hopes to expand his empire beyond the kitchen. Just don’t expect a range of Glovers Alley oven gloves any time soon.

“I got offered to do the food on a (cruise) ship, and OK, chi-ching, but do you really want to be...” he trails off.

“I grew up idolising (Gordon) Ramsay and Marco Pierre White and now in the industry we laugh about them: stock cubes and stuff like that, like what is he doing?” he slags the latter’s partnership with Knorr.

“If my name’s on the door, it has to mean something. I just try to live up to what it’s supposed to mean. I do have an ambition to do a book.”

Still, even the haute cuisinieur can’t resist the lure of the Golden Arches from time to time.

“I like my McChicken Sandwich or Big Mac meal, I get six nuggets on the side with a sweet curry dip. I get that on Deliveroo sometimes — if someone saw me with McDonald’s, can you imagine!”

• Food On The Edge takes place from October 16-17, 2023, at Airfield Estate in Dublin. See foodontheedge.ie for more