Those who became familiar through television and radio with the polished Anglo accent of Paolo Tullio, who has died aged 65, may have wondered how he came to possess it given that he was utterly and authentically Italian in his unforgettable presence in Irish culinary and media life for 40 years.
Tullio was the son of Italian parents who came to Ireland in the 1950s and who became wealthy in the restaurant trade.
They educated their only child at the well-known Benedictine public school Downside Abbey in Somerset and later at Trinity College, Dublin, where Paolo Tullio's famous eccentricity marked him out as something which indeed he was: unique.
At Trinity, he successively studied legal science, then mental and moral science (philosophy at honours level) before finally settling for a general studies degree.
‘New European’
Paolo Tullio could perhaps be described as one of the first of the New Europeans created after the second World War, a man born in one country, educated in a second and who made his career in a third.
A prominent member, while a student, of Dublin University Players, he was, in the judgment of Michael Colgan of the Gate Theatre, "the most successful actor who never was". Indeed he did later appeared in films, including John Boorman's The General, and as Mr Caffolla in Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy.
From a family of restaurateurs – his father, Dionysio, owned at least four in Dublin and became the Wimpy franchisee for Ireland – Paolo Tullio never had formal catering training but nonetheless made an immediate mark when he bought an old property at Annamoe in Co Wicklow in 1977 and converted it into a restaurant-cum-residence. In the following year Armstrong’s Barn became one of the first Irish restaurants to be awarded a Michelin star.
Despite the relative remoteness of the venue, Tullio catered in Annamoe to some of the best known clients in Ireland, including Charles Haughey, and his near neighbour in Wicklow, the film-maker John Boorman.
Speaking at his funeral service in the Examination Hall at Trinity College, Boorman drew attention to an aspect of Tullio much remarked upon by his contemporaries, namely his astonishing range of knowledge.
‘Massive mind’
“He had a massive mind,” said Boorman, adding that, as far as his friends were concerned “before Wikipedia, there was Paolopedia”, a source of information about everything from astronomy to house-building to basic vehicle-manufacturing.
After he closed the restaurant in 1988, Tullio turned his energies to writing and media presentation. His part autobiographical, part travelogue, part food book North of Naples, South of Rome, published in 1994 in association with an accompanying RTÉ TV series, was followed in 1998 by Mushroom Man, a scholarly study of a subject close to his heart, wild mushrooms, both edible and poisonous.
His Dublin publisher, Antony Farrell of the Lilliput Press, remarks that the latter book may have been the first to be presented as a series of emails and, as such, historic. A book of recipes for Roly's Bistro (2009), and Paolo Tullio Cooks Italian (2010) followed.
Tullio also founded the website foodandwine.net and contributed to tasteofireland.com, and in recent years was a much-loved weekly contributor on gastronomy to The Seán Moncrieff Show on Newstalk Radio.
Paolo Luigi Mario Tullio was born in Italy, the only child of Dionysio and Irene Tullio of Gallinaro, a town about 100 miles southeast of Rome in the Apennines, an area to which he remained attached all his life.
In 1975 he married Susan Morley, an artist, from whom he separated in 2004. She, their children, Rocco and Isabella, his mother, a son-in-law, a daughter-in-law, and a grandson survive him.