The Dublin Trilogy, Part 2: A conversation with Chef-Owner Kevin O'Donnell, Comet

Wexford-born chef Kevin O’Donnell, 32, returned to Dublin a year and half ago from Denmark where he has been working in the Research and Development chef role at the acclaimed 2 Michelin starred restaurant, Kadeau in Copenhagen (two stars) and Bornholm (one star). He and his wife, Laura Chabal, returned to Dublin together to set up their own restaurant, Comet. Before moving to Denmark, Kevin worked at 1 Michelin starred Bastible in Dublin, working alongside Barry and ClareMarie FitzGerald, who are now their business partners. Comet opened in Summer 2025 and gained its first Michelin mention in November.

The Knife caught up with Kevin ahead of the Michelin Guide awards ceremony in Dublin, which took place this week.

Chef Kevin O'Donnell and wife, Laura Chabal / Image: Ruth Calder-Potts

• What was your first job in Dublin? And did you always want to be a chef?

I didn't really care too much about school, but I always wanted to do something with a creative element to it. At one point, I wanted to be a musician, then a writer. I recorded some tracks which I hope will never see the light of day.

My first kitchen job was as a teenager after doing work experience, but I didn't really enjoy it very much. So, when I went travelling, I worked front-of-house for quite a few years. Cooking didn’t really appeal to me until I saw fine dining at a five-star hotel in New Zealand, where I saw cooking in an atmosphere that was calm and focused, with a creative element which ticked a lot of boxes for me.

Fine dining wasn't something I grew up with, so I thought maybe this is something I want to be involved with.

When I got back to Dublin, I started to work in kitchens properly, and I used to do stages on days off. Chapter One was one place I went to.

Eventually, I did a stage of Bastible, and Barry, the owner, gave me a job, even though I didn't have much experience, and then I just worked on from there.

• Do you think travelling has influenced the food you are cooking?

Yeah, totally. I'm pretty fast loose where I pull my culinary influences, I take inspiration from absolutely everywhere. I am mainly inspired by France, but I also use a lot of Japanese ingredients and Mexican chillies.  

For me, a nice thing about Irish food is it's still a bit of a blank canvas. I can use all my travel experiences, and there's nothing against that.

• Did you always dream of having your own restaurant?

I didn't really have in mind that this was the thing that I needed to do.

My last job was the research and development chef, or creative head chef, at Kadeau where I was creating the menus for the two-star restaurant in Kadeau, Copenhagen and the one-star, Kadeau, Bornholm.

That's an amazing position to be in; there were so many chefs, everything in the kitchen was amazing, everything was beautiful. And if I had a family or a mortgage in Copenhagen, I would have happily stayed at that job forever.

But my job was to create dishes and make sure that they went on the menu. But every dish has to go through the lens of Nicolai, the chef patron, who has to approve it – I'm creating it in his style. That's really fulfilling for a while, but eventually you kind of need to pull away.

There are two ways to looking at this: I'm creating it, but if it's wrong, it's on him; but on the other side if I create something really great, he's the one getting all the recognition.

I needed to pull away that safety barrier. The recognition is great, but the fear of failure is never really there, and I needed to embrace that. Laura and I are both still young enough and want to see if we can find the thing that's going to make us really, really, truly happy.

• How would describe the city of Dublin?

Dublin, it's not so much of a city, but it's more of a small town. For me, a city can be faceless, but here locals are still pretty happy to talk to everyone who visits. I feel like it's very warm and welcoming.   

Comet interior / Image: Adam Bell

• What is the concept?

It’s a pretty simple restaurant using nice ingredients and serving good wine in a hospitable friendly environment. We serve everything simply and do not put too much artifice into anything; the food is tasty and not too contrived.

Diners can engage with it at different levels. You can come in, have good food, have good wine, and that's it. Or you can ask more questions about where this ingredient is from? Or the techniques I am using?

The techniques are from Kadeau and from all these amazing places I have eaten at. So those things are all there, but we're not pushing that forward; we're just trying to let everything speak for itself.

• Comet is backed by Bastible's Barry and ClareMarie FitzGerald, does that give you a sense of security?

We were originally just planning to travel a bit and work in London and New York, but we came to Dublin for a holiday. I met with Barry, who owns Bastible, and I told him that I had left Kadeau. And then a couple of weeks later, he reached out to me about doing a restaurant. Laura and I just embraced it and went for it.

Barry put so much time into training me that I was able to get a job at a two-star place in Copenhagen. I was so well prepared from spending a year and a half in his kitchen; his training was so good. I had no right to be in the kitchen at Bastible in the first place – I was hopeless.

It gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction that they have backed me, and I'm part of their business. It gives me the freedom to be in the kitchen cooking and be sure that I'm happy with everything that's going. I'm totally involved in the business and the budget; they look after the nitty-gritty of making sure all the invoices are paid.

• Home sick?

I was away for 10 years, in Australia, New Zealand, and then after a spell in Dublin, I moved to Denmark; in all that time I never had a touch of homesickness. That includes during COVID when I didn't see my family and my friends much. I guess I was so focused on what I was doing that I never had time for homesickness to manifest.

But Laura and I came home for a visit in February a couple of years ago, it was a really normal visit, we walked around, had pints, and Dublin felt like it was on the up.

We were in the airport heading back, and Laura was like, what's wrong with you? I was being quiet and weird, she said, oh my God, you're homesick!

And from that point on, it just hit in, and I just couldn't get away from it. I was home as much as possible that year; it was the right time to come back.

• Tell us about the kitchen.

There are 14 staff in the kitchen. One of the things that I loved about working at Kadeau was the work-life balance. That is something we're trying to bring in as best as we can. The guys work three long days, and then on one day, they start a little bit earlier and then finish around four.

Comet dish / Image: Ruth Calder-Potts

• What is it about cooking for other people that you enjoy?

I love when people come in and try something that they’ve never had before and enjoy it. I think that’s really satisfying.

You can make people feel a lot of things through food, but at the end of the day, you’re also just cooking people dinner.

It is a nice marriage of doing something creative, and then it is a job that’s a trade. The craft of it is something I’ve come to enjoy more and more as I get older; the skills of perfectly butchering fish, knowing how to cook, prep and clean vegetables.

Also, when everything gets a little bit overwhelming, it’s nice to peel these carrots and cook them. It’s a simple thing, and beautiful.

• Tell us about the name, Comet.

We were looking at names, and we had this idea of calling it Comet. We were living and working in France, and we went over to Champagne to visit some winemaker friends. They told us that in certain years when a comet passes the Earth, there are these exceptional, amazing vintages.

I thought it was kind of a cool thing, because it's sort of supernatural, and they don't really know why this happens. It just had a certain resonance, so we decided to call the restaurant Comet, and when we first started doing supper club pop-ups around Dublin, we used the name Comet to get the name out into the world.

• Is having your own restaurant what you expected?

I expected it to be a ton of work, and it is. It is as rewarding and as thankless in equal measures, but you just kind of have to get on with it. One of the hard things was having the pressure of Michelin from the outset; it was never really something that we set out to achieve. But one of our first big reviews said we deserved a star, but we had only been open for three weeks.

• Tell us about the Michelin Dublin food scene.

There's so much cool stuff going on. There is a wonderful, weird little restaurant, Lena which is quite close to our house, it’s amazing.

I'm probably a bit guilty of not going out to eat as much as I should, but we go to Chapter One a little too often. It’s a smashing restaurant.

It's an exciting time in Dublin, as chefs who have been abroad are now coming back with new ideas. It will be really cool to see what the lay of the land is in a year or two. It is a shame that Dublin isn’t seen as a food city; people don't really come here specifically for the food, but it deserves to be. There are so many good little restaurants around.

Comet interior / Image: Adam Bell

• Is Dublin's food scene competitive?

Everyone is quite supportive. If there are ever any little problems, there are a lot of guys that I can text for help. I wouldn't say it's super competitive; it's a small city, and if you want to act in a certain way, you can isolate yourself very easily.

There's a lot more to be said for working in harmony.

• Are you looking forward to the Michelin awards coming to Dublin?

I'm looking forward to it, as a lot of the one and two-star guys from all over Ireland are coming up to eat lunch the day before. We have a couple of people from the UK, so it is pretty exciting to show them what the restaurant is all about.

• What will be on the menu for the high-profile chefs?

Dermot Allen is the owner of Winetavern Farm in Wicklow. He is a breeder of Oxford Sandy & Black pigs. I'm going to cook his pork because I've never met someone who cares so much about his animals.

• What's the plan for the next 5/10 years?

I am really happy with the direction that we've taken the restaurant in so far. I'm happy with the food, with my cooking, and we will just develop from here. Since we started, the constant has been 'change'. We changed the menu a lot, and we’re always looking for new suppliers, so I don't really plan to alter that; I like the constant evolution, that's what I find most exciting about cooking.

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