Restaurants

‘The old idea that you have to work six days a week and stay open all day to make money is bollocks’

Trevor Moran’s Locust has 36 seats, opens three days a week, doesn’t post menus on its website - and has just been named the best restaurant in America. The Irish chef talks kitchen culture, life in Nashville, and his accidental career in food

Trevor Moran: ‘The food is rustic but there’s a fair bit of technique behind it. The idea of the restaurant is pretty minimal. There are four of us in the kitchen and we do everything.’ Picture: Andrew Thomas Lee

You might think that running a restaurant with 1,000 people on a waiting list for tables would be a career-defining high. But Trevor Moran is taking a pragmatic view of it.

“When you think about it, it’s actually not much use. Whether it’s 1,000 people or one person, it doesn’t make a difference. We don’t have room for them, so what can we actually do?”

Moran chuckles as he says this. The Irish chef doesn’t ...