Éamonn Ó Catháin

Éamonn Ó Catháin is a sometime Irish chef, author and journalist and broadcaster.
Career
Éamonn Ó Catháin was born in Belfast. In 1974 he began 4 years at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth when he’d just turned 20, where he studied French and Celtic Studies. When returning to Ireland after completing his BA , he had several jobs in Belfast and Dublin before opening a restaurant called Shay Beano in Dublin in 1982. For the next ten years, this thrived in two locations before changing trends at the beginning of the 90s frowned upon small chef/patron establishments and the decision was taken to close when unable to compete with the many huge establishments that had recently opened - some in the immediate vicinity.
Ó Catháin later participated in some Irish daytime television programmes, such as The Afternoon Show, conducting cookery demonstrations on Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ). One then-regular item, called "Meal or no Meal", was a spoof on Noel Edmonds's Deal or No Deal. He was better-known for his programmes on TG4, among them Nua Gach Bia, Bia's Bóthar and Cósta Uí Chatháin. Bia's Bóthar was a travelogue initially of Ireland and then Europe, presented entirely in Irish with English subtitles where he cooks a meal, often outdoors, from local ingredients. It ran for five series from 2001 to 2005. The final series visited many of the 2004 accession countries then joining the European Union.
He also broadcast a radio show on world music on RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. It was called Thar Tír Isteach and went out on Friday nights, concentrating on music from Russia, Poland, Portugal, Africa, Brazil and various other “new Irish” communities now resident in recently multicultural Ireland. Prior to that, there were long-running series on RTÉ Radio One such as Wide World Music as well as a classical series in Irish, Cartlann Uí Chatháin on RTÉ Lyric FM.
For the most part his radio shows were themed around music, with the exception of Love Bites for RTÉ and The Global Gourmet for the BBC.
Personal life
Ó Catháin speaks Irish, English and French fluently. He has authored three books, The Irish Folk Music Guide (1981); Around Ireland With a Pan - Food, Tales and Recipes (2004); and The Hard Times Cook Book (2009).
His love of music is well-known and these days, retired, he lives alone with a collection of some 4,000 LPs which he attempts to listen to incessantly.

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