Meet the award-winning young chef entrancing Galway tastebuds at Michelin-starred Aniar

And it was clearly a hard-earned distinction, as Ian shared the gruelling reality behind working in the high-end restaurant trade – entailing long hours, intense physical and mental stress, as well as the exacting demands of maintaining the Michelin standard.

For Ian, it's a journey that has also encompassed everything from gastric-sleeve surgery to curb serious weight issues, professionally demanding mentors, and much else.

The Dublin native explained to the Irish Independent he had wanted to become a chef for many years, so at only 17 years of age, with no experience in the field, he started contacting Michelin Star restaurants across Ireland and the UK.

His determination resulted in chef Paul Kitching from Restaurant 21212 in Edinburgh giving him a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

Ian explained: "I went over and I did a two-day trial, I was 17. He offered me the job with no experience, no courses done, no school or anything like that. I think he just saw I really wanted it and I wanted to learn.

"So I had the position offered to me while I was in fifth year, and I explained to him I had to finish my exams so he kept the position for me until I finished my exams.

Ian remembers the first weeks at the restaurant doing something he has never done before: "It's tough especially when you start, you go in and you know absolutely nothing. At least if you come out of cooking school and they say 'make a béchamel' you know how to do it, while I was like 'what? What's that?'

"The reason I love the industry is there is no wrong or right way to do anything. As long as it tastes nice, it looks nice, then you can do whatever you want."

Ian fondly remembers his mentor Paul Kitching, who sadly passed away in December 2022, and said he is extremely grateful to him for everything he has taught him in just six months.

"I wouldn't be where I am without that man.

"Even though he was quite upset that I was leaving, he still got me good references and got me in there. I owe him for that."

Back in Ireland, Ian kept working in the industry, but despite his love for the job, he revealed several downsides of it.

The 24-year-old said that while working in kitchens he has experienced incredible mental and physical stress.

He sometimes had to work up to '19 hours a day with a half an hour break' and said the long hours can quickly take a toll on your health.

"We finish at 12am, you come home, the last thing you want to do is cook. You eat sh*t every night, get takeaways, crisps. Chefs have the worst diet.

"If you're not careful you can slip into a lot of drinking and a lot of doing drugs. Because when we finish there's no theatre or coffee shop open, it's only bars."

The toxic environment eventually brought him to the hard decision to end his career but now, years after the first experiences and being back doing what he loves, he is trying to change things.

"That's why I feel really strongly about kitchen culture, because I think now young people have more options than ever before.

"It's just pushing people away, the industry is so great, it should bring people in. It's starting to get better now to be fair, but in some places it's still really bad."

Ian moved with his family to Roscommon, where – with the contributing factor of the Covid-19 pandemic as well - he started struggling with his weight to a serious degree.

"I couldn't stand for more than 10 minutes, so I had to stop cooking altogether.

"I've always struggled with my weight, but I think it was definitely a bit of depression and anxiety as well. You get into that cycle where you're eating and you're looking at your yourself like 'oh my god', and you're depressed again, you eat again.

"My life completely revolves around food. When I go to sleep all I think about is food, food, food. So it's tough."

However, Ian's career was far from over and, after surgery and a long recovery, he got back to the kitchen.

"I tried dieticians, personal trainers, everything to try to lose weight and I just couldn't. So I decided to go get a gastric sleeve so they removed 85pc of my stomach. That was two years ago."

Ian is now working at Aniar, a one Michelin star restaurant in Galway City's Westend.

He still works long hours (about 12/13 per day), and the regular workday pressure, stress and the adrenaline are still part of the job, with hundreds of plates of food to be served every evening.

"We do 24 courses per person every night per 37 people if we're fully booked. That's 888 plates of food with five of us in the kitchen.

"When you're working in a gastropub you're doing maybe 2-300 people a day, so that's a different type of stress because it's so many people. But in Michelin stars you don't know if the plate of food you are going to send out is going to land on a Michelin inspector table and they are going to take away the star or give you the star. It's something that can destroy your business."

Despite his young age, Ian has come a long way since he first started working in a kitchen. He won the YesChef's Young Chef Of The Year Award, he was invited to speak about kitchen culture and young people in the industry at Food On The Edge, Ireland's biggest food symposium, and he has now been nominated as Young Chef of the Year at the Food and Wine Awards that takes place next week.

Talking about his job at Aniar, he said: "When I'm at work it doesn't feel like I'm working, I love every single second of it, from sweeping the floor to doing the best jobs.

"When I go into work I'm surrounded by people who are passionate, who want to be there and want to do their best.

"We're constantly researching, developing and pushing forward Irish cuisine, pushing boundaries and doing stuff that nobody else in the country is doing, we're not just doing dinner for people."