2006 BEST NEW CHEF AWARD PROFILE
F&W Star Chef
CATHAL ARMSTRONG’s first kitchen job was extremely inauspicious. While studying computer programming at a university in Dublin, he washed dishes at a local pizzeria on the side. But when a cook fell ill, Armstrong stepped into the kitchen to help. He never left. At the age of 19, emboldened by his time at the pie shop, Armstrong tried his hand at opening his own fine-dining French restaurant, The Baytree, outside Dublin. “I did everything that you should not do in the restaurant business,” he says of the learning experience. “After 10 months we decided we’d lost enough money and left the project.” He moved to Washington, DC, in 1990, and worked in pubs and then high-end restaurants throughout the city. In 2004, he broke off to open his own project, Restaurant Eve, in Alexandria, Virginia. Eve was an immediate success and Armstrong, along with his wife, Meshelle, quickly expanded their holdings to include a fish and chips shop, Eamonn’s, and a speakeasy, PX, in 2006, the same year he was named a Food & Wine Best New Chef. In 2007 the Armstrongs took over operations of an Alexandria institution, The Majestic, and followed that up with the gastropub Virtue in 2011, and the food retail palace Society Fair in 2012. A second location of Eamonn’s opened in August 2012, in nearby Arlington, Virginia.
Armstrong took a breather with Food & Wine to discuss caviar, mustard and heirloom cattle.
