Ahmet Dede: A day in the kitchen with West Cork's Michelin-starred chef
![Ahmet Dede: A day in the kitchen with West Cork's Michelin-starred chef Ahmet Dede: A day in the kitchen with West Cork's Michelin-starred chef](/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851275_8_articlesmall_mb-DEDE-004_1_.jpg)
Ahmet Dede and Maria Archer from The Customs House, Baltimore. Picture: Miki Barlok
“What I really wanted to do was open a café-deli,” says Maria Archer, her facial expression flitting along the register, trying to settle on a landing space somewhere between amusement and bemusement.
![A look at the kitchen at Customs House, Baltimore. A look at the kitchen at Customs House, Baltimore.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851257_8_articleinline_Dede_C2_A9JoeMcNamee2023_9538.jpeg)
![Maria Archer and Ahmet Dede from The Customs House, Baltimore. Picture: Miki Barlok Maria Archer and Ahmet Dede from The Customs House, Baltimore. Picture: Miki Barlok](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851260_8_articleinline_mb-DEDE-007_1_.jpg)
Elsewhere, Ade, another stagiaire, is assembling Sogan Dolma, Ahmet’s Michelin-starred take on a traditional Turkish dish, sweet onion, poached in onion stock, then confited in olive oil and stuffed with Turkish rice, dried apricots, mint and spices, topped with smoked buffalo yoghurt, caviar, and chive flowers. It begins with the singular and rather prosaic-looking cooked onion, which will never win any culinary beauty contests on its lonesome, but when fully adorned, looks every bit as good as it tastes.
It too is a slow and laborious process for what is in essence a single though very delicious mouthful. In the pastry section, Gokhan and Mine work side by side.
Gokhan is shaping dough into braided rings to make Simit, a Turkish street food staple that Ahmet used to sell as a child of 10 or 11 to make a little extra pocket money, but which he has now elevated from humble origins to a special place at the Michelin table.
Gokhan rolls the dough with the effortless and practiced ease that comes with repeating an action many thousands of times. The dough is then left to ‘marinate’ in a molasses syrup before being dredged in sesame seeds and baked.
![Ahmet Dede oversees an order heading out to tables at Customs House. Ahmet Dede oversees an order heading out to tables at Customs House.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851263_8_articleinline_Dede_C2_A9JoeMcNamee2023_9391.jpeg)
![Ahmet Dede speaks with his kitchen staff at Customs House, Baltimore Ahmet Dede speaks with his kitchen staff at Customs House, Baltimore](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851266_8_articleinline_Dede_C2_A9JoeMcNamee2023_9292.jpeg)
Anyone who has ever worked in a professional kitchen will be familiar with the daily rhythms, where the never relenting pace and thrumming efficiency of pre-meal prepping gradually rises in tempo to peak during service, when the clanging and clatter of pots and pans can often be peppered with regular explosions of human volatility, what the dining public imagines to be the head chef going full-blown Gordon Ramsey.
There is often truth in cliché but the Dede kitchen is the polar opposite.
If anything, it grows quieter as the speaker that has been booming techno all morning like a sonic pacemaker is silenced and the chefs further hone their levels of precision and concentration in assembling each dish.
Ahmet calls the orders with all the seeming urgency of a body wondering if anyone has seen the remote control but he has no need to even raise his voice let alone shout for his authority and control is absolute.
If the art of each Michelin dish is the final assemblage of the results of myriad little preparatory actions over preceding hours and even days, the art of running a Michelin kitchen is the assemblage of team and then melding and guiding all those individuals and their varying roles into a single entity that hums with the controlled power of a formula one car. Except this one is an electric vehicle, nearly silent.
![Ahmet Dede applies the eye for detail that's earned him a Michelin star. Ahmet Dede applies the eye for detail that's earned him a Michelin star.](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851269_8_articleinline_Dede_C2_A9JoeMcNamee2023_9396.jpeg)
![All business in Ahmet Dede's kitchen, at the Customs House, Baltimore All business in Ahmet Dede's kitchen, at the Customs House, Baltimore](https://www.irishexaminer.com/cms_media/module_img/7702/3851272_8_articleinline_Dede_C2_A9JoeMcNamee2023_9282.jpeg)