Robbie Millar: Robbie Millar, who has died in a car accident at the age of 38, was one of Ireland's best-known chefs. With his wife, Shirley, he ran the Michelin- starred Shanks restaurant near Bangor, Co Down, which has been widely regarded as the best restaurant in Northern Ireland in recent years.
When the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava (the former Lindy Guinness) invited him to open a restaurant on her Clandeboye estate, Millar seized the moment - and was an immediate success.
The restaurant won a Newcomer of the Year Egon Ronay award in 1995, and a Michelin star the following year.
The cooking was wildly eclectic but highly disciplined. But the style of the restaurant was different, too; Millar's friendly, informal manner was in sharp contrast to the traditional chef-patron of provincial Northern Ireland. And his openness was reflected in the huge window between kitchen and dining room.
He was a social animal who loved restaurants; on evenings off he would often head for London or Dublin where he would gather friends around a table. His last visit to Dublin was to L'Gueuleton recently.
In Belfast he was a regular at Paul Rankin's Cayenne and at Sun Kee where the bring-your-
own policy meant that he could partner Chinese food with fine French wines or his favourite champagnes, Krug and Roederer.
His reign at Shanks bore certain hallmarks. He liked to keep his menus short and, while the influences on his cooking could be as diverse as southern Spain or northern India, his insistence on local produce of the best quality gave the restaurant a strong sense of being rooted in Ulster.
Millar was not a chef who threw tantrums. People who worked with him invariably recall his beaming face, his warmth and his refusal to stand on ceremony.
Above all, he was a chef with painstaking attention to detail who realised that, while he had gathered an exceptional team around him, his presence was key to consistency. Millar was keen to acknowledge his staff's role in the restaurant's success: "It is a team effort and hard work - it's great for Northern Ireland tourism."
Born in Larne in 1967, the son of Bill and Eithne Millar, he studied catering at Larne college, now the Larne campus of the East Antrim Institute, and completed his studies for a City and Guilds certificate at the Northern Ireland Catering College in Portrush.
Winning a scholarship to train in Switzerland, he found the chef under whom he worked to be a strict disciplinarian. Some of his fellow trainees did not stay the course, but Millar persevered and proved to be an able student.
"When you arrive you don't know what turbot is," he recalled. "When you leave you know not just what it is, but how to cook it, where to buy it and where it comes from. It was like being in the army."
After a season in Greece he tried his luck in London, where he worked in a number of hotels including the Tara.
Returning to Northern Ireland in the early 1990s, he applied for a job as a chef de partie at the Roscoff restaurant in the centre of Belfast.
In 1993 he and his wife travelled across Europe on a culinary tour. A year later, the couple accepted the invitation to open their own restaurant in the grounds of Clandeboye estate.
A judge on the BBC television Master Chef series, Millar also regularly appeared on RTÉ's Afternoon Show.
When he was listed in this year's Michelin Guide, he reflected: "It's the first time a restaurant in Northern Ireland has won the Michelin star for 10 years and we are very proud of this."
He is survived by his wife Shirley and children Theo, Sasha and Tara Rose. Shirley's first husband, John Kyle (40), a quarry-owner, was shot dead by an IRA gunman in a pub outside Omagh, in July 1986.
Robin (Robbie) Millar: born April 26th, 1967; died August 13th, 2005.