David Rice
Meet our Head Chef
Before joining Ballinacurra House, David spent 2 years working as head tutor at Dublin’s premier cookery school, Cooks Academy. This enabled him to extend his skills beyond just cooking, and develop further his people and teambuilding skills. Prior to this, David was a senior chef at Dublin’s Michelin star restaurant Chapter One. Before that he was head chef at the Mustard Seed Lodge in Adare, Co. Limerick where he won Best Chef in Limerick at the Restaurant Association of Ireland Awards 2010. In addition, the Mustard Seed won Best Use of Local Ingredients in 2009 at the Georgina Campbell Awards during David’s tenure.
He was also fortunate enough to spend a year in the famous kitchens of Roly’s Bistro in Ballsbridge, Dublin and to have completed work experience in London at Gordon Ramsay’s Claridges, River Café and Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen in Cornwall.
David has done cookery demonstrations and pop-up restaurants with some of Ireland’s top chefs, such as Ross Lewis, Oliver Dunne, Stephen Gibson, Paul Flynn and Kevin Dundon.
David has made several television appearances to date, some of which included TV3’s Ireland AM, promoting Irish organic food and RTE’s series “Guerilla Gourmet”. He was involved in the Irish Hospice Foundation “Zest” cookbook where three of his recipes were published. David also spent some time as a regular food writer for Easy food magazine whilst working in Dublin.
David trained in professional cookery at The Limerick Institute of Technology where he won student of the year and represented Ireland in Europe at cookery competitions. He is a big fan of Italian food and really enjoys working with seafood. He likes to work directly with food producers because it’s important to know where your food comes from. David is a firm believer that a good cook is clever with ingredients and does not over-complicate flavours and techniques.
The Queen’s Dinner – Another major claim to fame was his contribution to the Queen’s Visit to Ireland in 2011. He was the lead chef with Ross Lewis of Chapter One that designed and presented the state banquet at Dublin Castle in honour of Queen Elizabeth.