Kay Harte and The Farmgate Café's Early Years. Twenty Five Years in the English Market.

Kay Harte and The Farmgate Café's Early Years

Twenty Five Years in the English Market.

The Farmgate above the English Market, its Restaurant on the far right, the Balcony on the left.

The 16 year old is sitting with her mother in a room overlooking the Front Strand in Youghal in the mid 1960s. It is the house of her mother’s friend and the table is set for dinner. The teenager remembers the table setting, especially those flowers floating in a bowl.

The meat was boiled leg of mutton and the teenager was given a bit of the nap of mutton as a treat. “I never forgot that meal,” she told me recently. “It was my first time at an adult meal and it was absolutely divine."

The younger generation at The Farmgate with Rebecca Harte (3rd left at rear).

Kay Harte at ease.

That 16 year old was Kay Harte and we were speaking in her café, The Farmgate, celebrating 25 years in the English Market. When I had asked her what had been her best meal ever, I had prefaced it by saying it would be a hard one to answer. “Not at all,’ was the immediate reply. It was memorable indeed. “That was my first realisation that plain simple Irish food can be so sophisticated."

Soon afterwards she got her first cookery book, by Robert Carrier. “I still have it, still use it, I have to very careful handling it now. He was particularly good at Italian dishes and my first Spaghetti Bolognese was his.” I asked Kay what her favourite non-Irish cuisine was. Well, she likes Middle Eastern and Spanish but especially Basque.

Let us fast forward now to 1994, the year  a nervous Kay opened the Farmgate. Though she had worked, “on and off” with sister Marog, who had started the still strong Farmgate in Midleton ten years earlier, she had never run a business. There was competition too. Famous chef Michael Clifford was trading very successfully in his café across the street!

President Michael Higgins at the Wall of Poetry in the Farmgate when his poem Stardust was added in 2018. Kay has long believed that our food is part of our culture and the Hartes have supported the arts here from day one.

Besides, the English Market wasn’t exactly at its best then. Marog though was having none of it. “You’ll have no problem. The market is your larder.” They brought the Midleton Farmgate brand and ethos with them. “The focus was very much on what was available in the market downstairs, a focus that we’ve maintained ever since. There’s been great loyalty, on both sides.” Kay's daughter Rebecca is now the manager here. While Marog was quite the driving force, another sister, Claire O’Brien, was also very much involved and indeed worked with Kay for ten years. Many of you will have met and continue to meet Claire at Farmers Markets in recent years, selling cakes, tarts and loaves in her own stall under her Gan Gluten label.

The Farmgate ensured a strong spotlight was directed towards the often forgotten efforts of our Women of the South when the revolution was commemorated in 2016.

The Farmgate, as it turned out, was opening at a good moment, as some very interesting people were already there and more were coming onboard regularly and they started a momentum that has gathered pace and respect over the decades.

Toby Simmonds was there, Mary Rose too and also Iago. Isabelle Sheridan had started, working first with Anne Marie and Martin (who were making an organic French cheese out in Reenascreena) and then Isabelle, with a stall down by the Princes Street entrance, started introducing her French terrines, charcuterie and more. Hederman’s Smoked Fish arrived too and Sheila Fitzpatrick opened her ABC (Alternative Bread Company) stall shortly after Kay's arrival.

Majella Cullagh raises the market rafters from the Farmgate 

And they were all very helpful. Mary Rose Daly “was the go-to person, always helpful, no hesitation.” All the camaraderie was “a huge encouragement”. Kay also remembers that Kay O’Connell (the fishmonger and mother of Pat) was always ready with advice. And she also remembers Paul Murphy of Coughlan's Butchers as being exceptionally helpful. “He was the Ard Saoi of the market, a rock of common sense. He always listened and then invariably came up with the solution.”

She remembers too the sisters Siobhan and Eileen, each a stallholder. “They regularly came up for a cuppa and were incredibly supportive, pure Cork characters.” Declan Ryan (Arbutus Restaurant) was another who came up with great advice, “especially on cooking tripe”. 

Many famous people from the world of food have visited The Farmgate, including Claudia Roden (4th left)

Sometimes, bureaucrats get the thumbs down from business people but Kay recalls that they got fantastic support from City Hall, support that was essential in opening the new enterprise. So with all that support, the Cork Farmgate began to find its feet. “It was still a daunting task, especially the fit out." Furniture came from Eric Pearce, art via painters Tom Climent and Billy Foley and sculpture from Michael Quane. Finding its feet, establishing its character, starting out as she meant to go, food and culture in the melange.

Beara's Leanne O'Sullivan's poem on the Great Wall

It wasn’t all plain sailing of course. “There was that famous Christmas Eve,” Kay recalls. “Big queues, customers lined down the stairs. Then the power went - no lights in the kitchen.  I managed to stay calm, we got through it, but it was afterwards it hit me!”.

One bit of advice to restaurant owners. Take more heed of your customers than the food critics. Don’t be worried about the food writers. They don’t run cafés or restaurants, often more interested in what is currently in fashion. But your customers are in regularly, whether it’s just for tea and toast or a big lunch when the occasion demands. Look after them because they vote with their feet.

And that was underlined during our talk when Kay excused herself to walk a recently widowed elderly customer down the stairs and have a few words together on the way. You can have presidents (the Farmgate has fed a string of them) but Kay believes the regular customer is the real royalty here. And she practices what she preaches.

Kay and I at the meeting with US bloggers, New York's Amy Cao and San Fran's Chris Connolly (who took the photo). 
All other pictures from the Farmgate collection.

Eight years ago, Kay and I sat down at very short notice with two visiting US bloggers. Kay ordered samples of everything on the menu and told us all about each part of the dish as she shared it out. I don't think the Americans had ever seen any restaurant owner as informative (she explained our "great balls of flour") and as passionate about food and where it came from. All through the encounter, Kay emphasised the importance of local provenance. I'll say it again, Kay practises what she preaches, and it has stood the Farmgate well over the last 25 years.