Booming Brown’s celebrate success

Brown’s restaurant based at Bonds Hill recently scooped Best Restaurant and Best Chef in County Londonderry in the highly sought after Restaurant Association of Ireland Awards fir 2012. The Brown’s team will now head to Dublin in May where they will attempt to win the same titles for the Ulster wide competition and should they be successful in that they will vie for the best in Ireland accolade.

Considering that proprietor and chef at Brown’s, Ian Orr, only took the restaurant over just two and half years ago the successful rise of the establishment has been meteoric and he told the Sentinel: “We are delighted to win this two years in a row, but we would like to think that either this year or the next we will be able to win one of the Ireland wide titles, but we will see what happens.”

An indicator of the level of work involved in winning these titles is evidenced by the fact that Brown’s will go up against chefs such as Noel McNeill from the Lough Erne and TV personality Nevin McGuire.

But, it is obvious that this level of competition is not a deterrent to Ian Orr but rather an incentive to seek continual improvement at Brown’s.

“What Brown’s has to offer that other places do not is that, yes, we provide fine dining, but it’s far from stuffy and in fact we have a great atmosphere. We have good music and provide value for money-for example we do two courses for £15, which is great.

“We also do a fine dining barbecue, which started last Friday and that’s £20 for four courses. We also have a small demonstration kitchen and we do demonstrations on the first Saturday of every month for £10,” said Ian.

In these austere economic times the restaurateur says that Brown’s is bucking the trend of closures and in fact is increasing trade.

Ian said: “At the start it was definitely tight but we’ve definitely turned the tide. We took over the name Brown’s and the good thing was we already had a clientèle. Another thing we have to offer is that the service we provide is top notch. From the minute you walk through the door until you leave it is all about customer care. We also involve the staff in what we do. We will be inspected three or maybe four times before the next awards and for example we ask the staff to taste all the food every time we change the menu so they can share in the pride of any success. We scored 98 per cent in last years inspection and that’s something we are looking to achieve again this year or even improve on.”

Brown’s will compete for the Ulster and Irish titles in May 14 next in Dublin.