The first time I spoke to Kerryman and chef John Relihan was in a field in Dublin while he carefully monitored a breeze block barbecue set-up. It was a balmy August afternoon, with everyone wearing sunglasses and squinting through the aromatic wood smoke that hung over the 2015 Big Grill Festival in Herbert Park. As I interviewed him about his career up to that date – training in Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant, stints at renowned spots like St John in London and Incanto in San Francisco, and back to London to work at Jamie’s Barbecoa; all by the age of just 29 – John never lost focus on the food, happy to talk to me but always keeping an eagle eye on timings to get the meat just right.
The first time I spoke to Kerryman and chef John Relihan was in a field in Dublin while he carefully monitored a breeze block barbecue set-up. It was a balmy August afternoon, with everyone wearing sunglasses and squinting through the aromatic wood smoke that hung over the 2015 Big Grill Festival in Herbert Park.
As I interviewed him about his career up to that date – training in Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen restaurant, stints at renowned spots like St John in London and Incanto in San Francisco, and back to London to work at Jamie’s Barbecoa; all by the age of just 29 – John never lost focus on the food, happy to talk to me but always keeping an eagle eye on timings to get the meat just right.
It was his second time at the Big Grill, a barbecue festival that started in 2014. This was a time when Irish people were learning ‘grill’ or ‘barbecue’ didn’t necessarily have to mean burnt sausages and hockey-puck burgers frazzled to a crisp over flames on a tinfoil tray.
American-style barbecue, based on African-American cooking methods from the American south, had spread throughout the US and was just starting to make major inroads in Europe. It’s a low and slow way of cooking, using indirect flame and making for delicious, fall-apart, richly flavoured food.
That first Big Grill Festival was dedicated to this style of barbecue; bringing international experts, including John, to cook over fire in a smoke-swathed Herbert Park. This was food as theatre. People came to watch chefs labour over their coals and wood, savour the appetite-whetting aromas and eat good food.
The weather was ideal, the beer was flowing, and everyone had a great time. Irish interest in barbecue was piqued: the Big Grill has become a fixture on the food festival menu ever since.
Although he was then based in London, that wasn’t the first time that John cooked barbecue in Ireland. The previous weekend he had returned to his rural hometown of Duagh, north Kerry, organising a gathering of international grill chefs and friends to feed the village and raise money for a church bell tower restoration. With barbecue trailers, a seven-foot brick barbecue pit and even a hangi – a traditional Maori underground oven – it became an event that had local Listowel writer and barman Billy Keane describing “Duagh as the culinary capital of the world, at the moment.”
The Naked Chef
Big Grill founder Andy Noonan met John there and invited him to cook in Herbert Park, kicking off an association that has continued every year since.
The boy from Duagh had already made good, but he was only just starting. John’s dedication to barbecue and love for the craft of cooking over fire has been a big part of his hard-working career, starting off as a teenager with three jobs.
“I was working at Allos Restaurant in Listowel after school and on weekends. I worked at Johnny Bob’s [nightclub] as a cleaner and bartender, and I worked for my uncle doing landscaping,” John explains. At that stage – he was 16 – he knew he wanted to be a chef. While looking at Irish catering college options, John caught an episode of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen, and with “all the young kids messing around,” it struck a chord.
This popular documentary series followed Jamie as he attempted to train a rag-tag group of unemployed young people for jobs in the catering industry. John applied for the second intake in 2004, flew from Shannon to London for an interview – his first time leaving the country – met with Jamie, and secured himself a place. The once-upon-a-time Naked Chef became, and remains, a friend to and influence on John.
While looking at Irish catering college options, John caught an episode of Jamie Oliver’s Jamie’s Kitchen, and with “all the young kids messing around,” it struck a chord.
“During that time,” John says, “I learned from Jamie about his passion for food, flavours, herbs and fresh fish. We went to Scotland to eat oysters, visited farms to see where the meat comes from and flew to Italy with Jamie and Gennaro [Contaldo, London-based Italian chef and Jamie’s mentor] to taste wine. It gave me a bigger appreciation of food and wine. I could see how much work goes into every job, whether you’re a waiter, a winemaker or a chef – everyone has their own responsibility and they all have to appreciate other people’s work.”
Industrious, passionate and talented, John absorbed these lessons and thrived in the pressurised kitchen environment. When he graduated from Fifteen, he was hungry to learn in other places, and from other chefs.
There were a couple of years spent at Fergus Henderson’s nose-to-tail cooking mecca, St John’s, in London, and also at San Francisco’s Incanto, a restaurant known for Chris Cosentino’s offal-oriented Italian cuisine.
A call from Jamie Oliver in 2010 brought him back to London to work at Barbecoa. This was a new barbecue restaurant, which Jamie opened in collaboration with US grilling expert, Adam Perry Lang, with 300 seats and the capacity to feed over 1,000 people a day. John came in as the senior sous chef and rose to the role of executive head chef before he left, five years later.
That was when bringing barbecue to Irish festivals played a part in his next step.
John was gettting tired of the London life, saying, “I love London, but it sucks the energy out of you. You don’t see anything outside work and your house…you don’t get much time to go and eat in restaurants when you’re working 80 to 90 hours a week.” So when an offer came in to set up a meat and smoke-focused restaurant in Cork called Holy Smoke, he decided to make the move. “I thought I’d be six months in and out, get the job done and back to London,” he says ruefully. “But I’m still here. I fell in love with my own people. In London, you keep your head down, you keep to yourself. In Cork, everyone was saying ‘good morning’ as I went to work.”
John Relihan at Pitt Bros BBQ in Dublin. \ Philip Doyle
Irish barbecue
His next move was to Dublin: in 2022, John partnered up with Dublin’s Pitt Bros BBQ founder, David Stone, to work on the restaurant menu, developing a range of branded sauces and rubs – now in more than 100 outlets around Ireland – and figure out a festival offering. It was great pairing.
On George’s Street since 2013, Pitt Bros was an early adopter; one of the earliest barbecue restaurants in the country, always careful when it comes to sourcing (the meats are from FX Buckley) and slowly smoking over wood for the best flavour.
They were at the Big Grill that first year in 2014 and have returned for every festival since, with John involved for the last three years.
The Big Grill is far from the only place you’ll find barbecue these days, with most festivals featuring at least one truck with pulled pork, brisket and buffalo wings.
Barbecue is also a part of Bord Bia Bloom at the Phoenix Park (29 May to 2 June), which is where you’ll next find John, cooking with fire. “It’s a primal thing,” he says. “When people are at something like Bloom, they see the smoke rising and are drawn to it. When you eat food cooked over fire, it’s been slow-cooked – something like brisket takes up to 11 hours – that’s when the magic happens and you can appreciate the time dedicated to it.” Just follow the smoke.
1. All year barbecue
“We are instinctively drawn to the sight of meat cooking over fire,” says John, “and we should do it all year round, not just in the summer. If you’re new to barbecue, buy a simple grill, a firelighter and some good fuel. Fuego Fuels and Goodwood Fuels are Irish companies that sell charcoal with no weird chemicals. Spend the money on charcoal – you’ll only need a handful.”
2. Heat zones
“Think about the barbecue like a pizza with different heat zones: direct heat for fast cooking, indirect heat for low-and-slow, and a warm zone. You can start off your steak on the hot side and move it [to a cooler area] so that you don’t have any flare-ups and it’s safe.”
3. Local butcher
“Speak to your local butcher. Tell them that you’re having a barbecue and pick up steak for you and the family, some chicken, pork and cook it on the fire.”
For John, cooking it over fire doesn’t need to be a big mystery: “there’s so much knowledge out there online if people want to give it a go. Don’t be afraid. Just light up the barbecue and cook outside.”
4. Talk to John
If you have questions about barbecue, find John at Pitt Bros during summer festivals, or @johnrelihan on Instagram. He’s always happy to talk barbecue: “tell people to feel free to pop me a message about barbecue and I will respond.”
Top Tip:
Start off your steak on the hot side and move it to a cooler area so you don’t have any flare-ups.
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