Sixteen years ago no young man was ever going to set up a pub in Dublin. This was a problem for Brian Patton. The then 24-year-old grew up around pubs – his father owned three in the capital – and despite having a slew of third-level qualifications, Patton knew he was destined to enter the trade.
But it was “crazy money to open one in Ireland at the time”, he recalls. The time was 1997, the economy was looking good, but prohibitively high prices meant Patton would have to follow his dream elsewhere. He had spent a couple of summers working with BMW in Germany but soon discovered the market there was saturated, with about 400 Irish pubs.
So he sought counsel from Guinness. The brewer had a man in Vienna who told him to come over, saying Austria was a good fit for the Raheny lad.
It was cheaper, first of all, and two years earlier had joined the EU. This cleared the way for Patton to bring staff over from Ireland to open “an authentic pub as much as possible”.
Once set up, Charlie P’s (named after his late grandfather) gave him scope to explore a growing passion for food. Irish pubs aren’t renowned for their fare, but Patton says he wanted to tap into the burgeoning artisan food scene in Ireland. He developed contacts with some specialist and small-scale producers and started importing.
Now the pub serves Jack McCarthy's Black Pudding from Kanturk, Co Cork; Sheridan's Irish Farmhouse Cheeses; lamb and beef from FX Buckley's in Dublin; Donegal Rapeseed Oil and Kelly's Oysters from Kilcolgan, Co Galway.
Gault Millau
Recently it received the 2014 Gault Millau Restaurant Guide Chef's Toque Award. After Michelin, the Gault Millau is the leading guide for restaurants in western Europe and, although "people don't know about it in Ireland, it's created a huge amount of buzz here, that an Irish pub has received something like that", Patton says.
Irish pubs went through something of a boom in the 1990s and Patton reckons he opened his when they were at their peak in Austria. As their numbers declined, Charlie P’s focus on food stood to it.
“I think pubs have to offer more reasons to a consumer to visit them and food has a massive potential for growth,” Patton believes.
He credits the new vanguard of Irish cuisine for inspiring him.
“Some fantastic restaurants opened up in the last couple of years in Ireland and it’s great because I think the first wave of Michelin stars produced younger cooks who opened their own places and they would have influenced me a lot.”
As he saw Ireland slide deeper and deeper into recession, Patton was grateful for Austria, a country where he could “kind of weather the storm of the economy”.
A few years ago he would have looked on the Austrians as being “not so adventurous” in business. Now he’s glad the downturn “hasn’t hit anywhere near as badly as it has, unfortunately, in Ireland . . . People stopped spending for maybe six months, 12 months at the most and then they came back. It really didn’t have a huge impression in turnover in the pub, whereas I’d see people I’d know in the industry at home on their knees. There was a massive contrast between the two economies.”
Although he makes plenty of trips back to Ireland, Austria is “definitely my home”. He has two children there. “They were born in Ireland but go to a local state school, so they’re growing up being taught in English and German . . . it’s the best of both worlds really.”
The pub isn’t his only enterprise in Austria. There’s also the plonk.
“Late last year, I launched a wine,” he says. He studied wine for a couple of years in Dublin and, in Austria, became co-owner of a vineyard. In November, he launched Heinz W in Ireland through an online seller and he hopes the Austrian white will appeal to jaded drinkers.
"People are bored with Chardonnay and Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc so hopefully it will be a success."
Pop-up restaurant
Beyond that he's looking for an indoor location for a "pop-up restaurant" in Vienna specialising in meat. He tried something similar on the banks of the Danube during the summer called, he laughs, It's all about the Meat, Baby, and it was "a massive success".
For that enterprise he imported Irish beef and he’s convinced the word “Irish” on food labelling is considered a mark of quality. The Irish food industry has made large strides since he set up in Vienna, gaining an international reputation along the way.
In Austria, as in other countries, specialist sellers offer Irish products such as cheeses and smoked salmon.
“I’m actually looking across the road at a burger place which sells a choice of ‘Irish beef’ in a burger,” Patton says over the phone. “That was never going to happen 15 years ago”.
