“I can’t wait to get that door bloody open,” says Mark Moriarty as he surveys the interior of Studio, his new restaurant and private dining venture in Dublin 2. Like the classic entrepreneur, he claims to have no fear about the endeavour, his biggest to date, and he’s convincing.
“Am I scared? No, I’m not scared of anything ... Am I up at night? Yes. Is there a 100 million things that can go wrong? Yes,” he says. “But I don’t think anyone going into opening a start-up, and particularly an ambitious one like this, should feel comfortable. So am I uncomfortable? Yes, I am.”
Now in his early 30s, Moriarty’s career trajectory means he knows well the difference between healthy stress and unhealthy burnout, with the new business at Wilton Park , on the banks of the Grand Canal, informed by this. Unlike most fine-dining businesses, it will open from Monday to Friday only, leaving weekends for family.
Moriarty was inspired to get into professional cooking during school transition-year placements. He recalls finding himself burned out at age 20, when he was hospitalised for exhaustion. At the time, he was studying at culinary college, working at the Michelin-starred Greenhouse restaurant in Dublin, and practising his dish for the 2012 Euro Toques Irish Young Chef of the Year competition. It all came in on him and he collapsed on a night out.
It was a seminal moment in his life, one that saw him refocus on working smarter, not harder.
“I loved the job, but sometimes it was what you missed out on as a result of the hours – that was what hurt. It wasn’t the job.”
Influenced by his parents, who are both mental health professionals, and his experiences of working too much early in his career, he now places a bigger emphasis on “monetary value versus personal value and time”.
[ Mark Moriarty: ‘I loved the whole kitchen atmosphere. I loved the weird people, all these introverts’ Opens in new window ]
But is this compatible with working as a chef, a career known for its long working hours and sometimes toxic working environments? Perhaps – which is why Moriarty is taking such a novel approach at Studio.
“It’s not completely different, but it is something pretty new for Ireland,” he says, explaining that the restaurant will open only on Friday nights, offering a set tasting menu, with private dining on offer Monday to Thursday.
While all of this is happening, Moriarty will keep his extensive portfolio career going.
A former San Pellegrino world young chef of the year, he was on the Forbes 30 under 30 list back in 2017; he worked at Dublin’s Greenhouse restaurant under head chef Mickael Viljanen (now of Chapter One), which had two Michelin stars; he’s on our screens on RTÉ’s Mark Moriarty: Cook like a Chef; he has a number of corporate gigs such as a role with Marks & Spencer, he’s chef in residence for Diageo, he hosts a podcast, Roasted, and he flies to New York four or five times a year to work at The Dead Rabbit. He has also written two cook books, Flavour and Season. And, of course, he has been The Irish Times food writer since 2023.
The restaurant part is obviously something he has left out of his portfolio, so far – “People have been asking me for 15 years when am I opening a restaurant”.
“Should I have done it earlier? I had lots of opportunity to do something like this over the last 10 years, but I was very, very young. I made sure to not fall into the trap of thinking I knew everything and could do everything.”
He says he “waited f…