donellis.ie

We came back from Melbourne in 1997 having spent 7 years living and working in that wonderful city.  It was a great time to be in Melbourne and we met many Australian friends at that time who have since become friends for life!   Melbourne is Australia’s capital of food, and its multicultural food influences still inspire us today.  1997 was also a great time to come back to Ireland, so we decided to settle in Wicklow Town and found a place to live.  I continued to work in my telecommunications job from London and Europe over the next few years.  I had talked for years about changing careers - even in my late teens I had thought about Hotel Management, and more increasingly as I wanted to become a chef, so I headed to Ballymaloe in 2000 for 6 months and had a great experience learning and teaching, coming away with the idea of opening a gourmet food store which would cater for people coming home from work picking up food – provisions etc..