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A journey through hotels

Saturday January 20 2018
chef

Retired executive chef Eamon Mullan is a legend in Kenya and abroad. PHOTO | COURTESY | EAMON MULLAN

By KARI MUTU

Retired executive chef Eamon Mullan is a legend in Kenya and abroad. The short slight man tells witty stories of his 43 years in Kenya.

We are chatting on the verandah of his Nairobi home overlooking a mature garden and swimming pool. He is candid, and not afraid to stand up for what is right.

“I was a bit of a slave driver in my time, but many of my guys have gone overseas and done well,” Mullan says.

Famous people he has cooked for include South Africa’s former president F W de Klerk, Cherie Blair, wife of Britain’s former prime minister, and Kenya’s second president Daniel arap Moi.

Others are Brazilian soccer legend Pele, whom Mullan describes as a great gentle-man, Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco, and movie stars Angelina Jolie, Robert Redford and Meryl Streep when they were filming in Kenya.

In 1983, Mullan’s team catered for Queen Elizabeth II at the Treetops Hotel in central Kenya. She was staying at the hotel when her father King George VI died in February 1952.

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Born in 1951 in London to Irish parents who didn’t have much money, Mullan had a job by the age of 13. He was a promising student but because of “moody adolescent laziness” he failed most of his exams and left high school at the age of 16.

He applied for a low-level hotel kitchen job, even though he had never cooked in his life.

“I hated it. It was an old-fashioned kitchen, below the stairs, lights on all the time and rough guys,” recalls Mullan. He wanted to quit after three weeks, but the hotel’s general manager convinced him to stay on.

“After that, I got the hang of it and began to like it,” he said, and enrolled part-time at a culinary school while still working.

At 17, he won two gold medals in a cooking competition and the kitchen became his life. He has has worked in prestigious hotels like the Gleneagles in Scotland, Hotel Negreso in France, Ritz Hotel in London and the Mandarin Oriental in Bangkok. He acquired the nickname “Goldfingers” because of winning so many gold medals.

“I became very cocky,” admits Mullan.

He speaks of getting into heated altercations with hotel management over work injustices. He was called racist and other appellations because of his tough, no-nonsense approach in the kitchen, but says he handled the criticism with nonchalance, comfortable that his work and integrity spoke for itself.

In his autobiography, A Celebrity Chef in Africa: Food for the Famous, Mullan writes: “Europeans who come to live and work in Africa and who do not respect the local people are the lowest individuals in my opinion.”

chefing

Chef Eamon Mullan has cooked for several dignitaries including Queen Elizabeth II, in 1993. PHOTO | COURTESY | EAMON MULLAN

He writes about the excesses of corporate hotel executives while his team worked with outdated kitchen equipment and no uniform replacement for years. He was accused of selling hotel food but was actually supplying a weekly meal, made from unused ingredients, to homes for children and mothers with HIV/Aids.

He survived the bomb blast at Norfolk Hotel on New Year’s Eve 1980 in which 16 people died. He worked there for almost 28 years and was fired on a 24-hour notice in 2005.

His biggest legacy, he says, has been nurturing new talent. When he first came to Kenya in 1975, he was surprised at how dull and elderly the kitchen staff were. Within a year, he had organised a cooking competition at the Kenya Utalii College. The prize was a year-long internship at the famous Savoy Hotel in London.

“That is how I started bringing the youngsters up,” he says. He brought in young cooks, culinary contests, overseas exposure and partnering with renowned international chefs. He established a trainee academy at the Norfolk Hotel. Many of his apprentices had no experience and often came from poor backgrounds.

“I interviewed people to see if their attitude was good,” says Mullan.

He says aspiring chefs today are not willing to develop their skills.

“They want to come out [of college] and become a sous chef, but they still have a lot to learn.” He was a kitchen trainee for four and a half years, often worked 15-hour days, and learned from the top chefs.

Many of his protégés have built global careers. Timothy Kairu was the executive chef at the Dubai World Trade Centre, Sammy Njenga was the senior sous chef at the prestigious Goring Hotel in London, and Mark Chira was the executive chef at the Intercontinental Hotel Nairobi.

In 2013, after eight years at the Fairview Hotel in Nairobi, he hung up his apron.

“It’s not been a bed of roses, there have been tough times. But I would do it again,” he said.

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