LOCAL HERO


18


Trough his international food symposium, Food on Te Edge, chef Jp McMahon has put his adopted city Galway and Ireland on the global culinary map. He tells Tina Nielsen about his passions and projects as he reflects on his mission to promote Irish food culture


I


t seems limiting to describe Jp McMahon as a chef. It is true that the Irishman has two restaurants, one of them boasting a Michelin star, and he made his name


as a passionate proponent of his country’s food heritage and culinary culture. However, the self-taught


chef is also an author, a columnist, a playwright, a painter and the founder director of international food symposium Food on Te Edge (FOTE). He’s learning to play the piano and has just published his fourth book, An Irish Food Story. And, really, it should be


Dr. Jp McMahon, after he was awarded a PhD in drama and theater two years ago.


To say there’s a lot going on


in McMahon’s life would be an understatement. Anyone who wants to come along for the ride had better hold on tight. As we meet in the Autumn


of 2024, he is still in book tour mode and the ninth edition of Food on Te Edge looms large. With the symposium he has almost singlehandedly put Galway, the city he has called home since 1999, on the global gastronomic map. If the tight local community of chefs in Ireland’s fourth-largest city has created a culinary buzz about the place, it is McMahon who has taken it to the world. On Instagram he is known as mistereatgalway. As a young chef he had


visited gastronomic congresses


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