Cafe Rua

The homefront is where Aran McMahon learnt his craft, working in the family's Café Rua, on New Antrim Street, in Castlebar, County Mayo.

He cut his teeth there, and learned how to cut his cloth, working under the tutelage of his Mum, Ann. But in fact that tutelage had begun even earlier: “In eighties Ireland, we got to travel the world via what came out of her kitchen...” he remembers, and it's an attitude that has never left him: food is not just cooking and eating, food is travelling and embracing cultures and experiences. McMahon is your host, and your guide: the Thomas Cook of food.

And so, Rua is experiential: in McMahon's shop and café, you get to taste the world, you get to see beyond your own borders, to see past that horizon you thought was immovable. You just have to be open to it, have to be open for it. You just have to let the right one in.

It's a gift, a gift handed down through the family, the way gifts should be. But Aran McMahon has taken the gift as far as he can, and he's still only beginning: he's just turned 40, so the possibilities are huge. He went to Clongowes, then to college in Galway, missing lectures whilst he cooked from Robert Carrier's books – always a good sign: Carrier may be forgotten, and people may have been fussy and disparaging about him when he was at his peak, but he was a pro, he knew his stuff. And McMahon also imbibed that aesthetic that Carrier espoused: to eat well, to cook well, is simply to live well, to live as well as you deserve, and to help others to live as well as they can, thanks to your guidance. The people of Castlebar live better because of RUA, not just because of what McMahon and his team do and what they sell, but also because of the way they do it, their sense of style, their confidence, their nous. He's a player.