Cork’s Arbutus Breads, owned by Ireland’s first Michelin star holder, sold to Dublin company

The principal reason for the sale is the march of time, with Mr Ryan having endured a litany of health challenges in recent years that have spurred him into retirement.

“Next July, I’ll be 81. The knees are gone and there are a few more things broken,” said Mr Ryan. “And the opportunity to work with Bretzel offered continuity, and even the chance to improve the operation, and we have admired what they were doing for a number of years.

“I looked at their bakery in Dublin before we opened [the current bakery] and they sent bakers down here, so there’s been a mutual admiration there.” 

At the outset of his career, Mr Ryan studied hotel management and cheffing in London and France — including stints with legendary chefs Paul Bocuse and Jean Troisgro.

In 1970, he and wife Patsy took over Arbutus Lodge and four years later, the hotel restaurant received the first ever Michelin Star in Ireland — along with Dublin’s Russell Hotel, which subsequently lost it the following year.

Having been joined by brother Michael and Michael’s wife Catherine — now co-owners of Isaac’s, another iconic Leeside restaurant — Arbutus Lodge held the star until 1983. It regained it again in 1987, while also gaining a star for another family enterprise, the Cashel Palace Hotel, in 1982-1983.

The Irish food landscape was infinitely bleaker in 1974 and as Mr Ryan said in 2013, winning what is undoubtedly one of the most prestigious accolades in international fine dining did not cause quite the same stir on home turf as it would now.

“It came as a shock to us,” Mr Ryan recalled in the Irish Examiner. “But Michelin wasn’t in the Irish consciousness at the time — we probably got page 4 in the [then Cork] Examiner. It wasn’t a big deal. These things were taken far more seriously in Britain than in Ireland at the time. In Ireland there was an egalitarian feeling that this kind of thing was only for the privileged. While we were busting a gut and certainly weren’t privileged, it was very hard to do what we were doing cheaply.” 

The Ryan’s sold Arbutus Lodge in 1999 but Mr Ryan wasn’t done yet with food and began baking sourdough breads in his garage. He would go on to reinvent himself as an artisan baker, the first in Ireland to produce commercial sourdough bread.

Selling them primarily in the farmers’ markets, he later moved into a bespoke bakery where he was soon turning out 2,000 loaves a night of traditional handmade sourdough breads along with their very popular brown bread, which is still made to this day using his grandmother’s original recipe.

His innovation and success with Arbutus Bread inspired a new wave of younger Irish bakers determined to move away from the industrialised model — instead opting to produce deeply flavoursome sourdough loaves using just flour, water, salt and extended fermentation times of up to 24 hours.

Mr Ryan was one of the original six founding members of Real Bread Ireland in January 2015 which now has over 300 bakery members in the 32 counties of Ireland producing traditional handmade artisan sourdoughs, breads and pastries, transforming much of the offering now available in the national bread basket.

The original Bretzel Bakery was established in 1870 and taken over by William Despard in 2000. He and Mr Ryan soon established a mutually supportive professional and personal relationship. 

Multi-award winning Bretzel currently operates from its original shop in Portobello, with two additional bakeries in Dublin and Kildare. They supply a diverse range of artisanal breads and pastries to both retail and trade customers, and Mr Despard is keen to continue their shared ethos around baking and selling breads.

“The reason for this sale is that Declan and I are really good friends since I bought Bretzel back in Christmas 2000,” said Mr Despard.

“He was like a father figure to me when I first started, taking my bakers down to Cork under his tutelage, and there is no doubting the attractiveness of the Arbutus Breads business, there is a fantastic synergy between the two companies and we were delighted when they approached us about the sale.

“Future plans are to keep it exactly as it is, like I did with Bretzel for the first half a dozen years, and keep all the good quality fermentation that is so good for the health of the nation, nurturing its position in Cork and making it as good as I possibly can in the South West of Ireland.”