Peter MacPherson Robinson
Born: 17th August, 1942
Died: 23rd October, 2018
France, its language, its peerless viniculture and gastronomy, even its colonial history, ran like a golden thread through the colourful, amorous and exotic life of Peter MacPherson Robinson, who has died aged 76 at his home in Andorra.
A classically-trained chef who was a brother-in-law of former president Mary Robinson, his very considerable achievement was to be one of the first restaurateurs in this country to receive a Michelin star (in 1978) for the excellence of his cuisine at Armstrong’s Barn restaurant at Annamoe in Co. Wicklow, which he established in 1972 with his then wife, Christine.
Located almost next door to the home of film director John Boorman, who became a regular customer and subsequently a close friend of Robinson, it garnered in time a celebrated clientele who included stars of screen and television working at Ardmore Studios in nearby Bray.
In the Ireland of nearly 50 years ago, its French classical cuisine stood out in the wider Dublin region, despite its relatively remote location, no doubt aided by the lack of such restaurants at the time in the area around the capital, following the closure in 1967 of the legendary Jammet’s in Nassau St.
One of its earliest supporters, recalled Robinson's brother Nick, speaking to The Irish Times , was the then chairman of the newspaper, the late Major Thomas McDowell, a fact which may have been influenced by Robinson's close friendship and good working relationship with Declan and Patsy Ryan of the Arbutus Lodge restaurant in Cork, and their friends, the journalist Donal Musgrave, who was at the time the newspaper's correspondent in the city, and his wife Shirley.
No academic, he escaped to work in a restaurant in London at 18
Armstrong’s Barn represented, along with the Arbutus Lodge, the Allen family at Ballymaloe House in Shanagarry and Sean Kinsella’s Mirabeau in Dublin, among a very small number of such establishments, a revolution in Irish culinary standards at that time.
Declan Ryan, whose restaurant became one of the first in Ireland to be awarded a Michelin star in 1974, recalled how he, Robinson, Musgrave and their wives made several expeditions to France during that decade to source wines directly from producers, rather than simply rely on merchants to supply them.
"We used to visit everyone, all the best winemakers," he told The Irish Times, adding that one of the most famous of these, Gerard Jaboulet, already by then aware of their reputations, invited them to eat as his guests at a three star Michelin restaurant. Equally, when they visited the world famous Les Freres Troisgros at Roanne, there was no bill to pay.
In 1974, Armstrong’s Barn received the “pestle and a bottle” rating from the British Consumers’ Association’s Good Food Guide, and a star in the Egon Ronay Guide.
This gastronomical distinction was brought about by a great deal of very hard work on Robinson’s part, and from an unlikely heritage for an innovator of classical food.
Born into a middle class family in Monkstown, Co Dublin, Robinson was the second of four sons of Howard Robinson, a chartered accountant who served a term as president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, and his wife Lucy, (nee Douglas), and was educated at Mountjoy School (now Mt Temple Comprehensive School).
No academic, he escaped to work in a restaurant in London at 18, and then underwent a brutally hard apprenticeship as a commis chef at the Bristol Hotel in Paris, which has one of most renowned kitchens in the world, from 1962 to 1965.
There followed further culinary education at L’Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne in Switzerland, widely regarded as one of the best such establishments anywhere. Thus, when starting his Irish operation in the early 1970s, he was exceptionally well-qualified to do so.
Robinson's life then took another, and highly different direction
In 1978, having been awarded his Michelin star but also with his marriage failing, Robinson sold Armstrong’s Barn to Paullio Tullio, and worked for a period in Sneem, Co Kerry at the Blue Bull restaurant.
From there he moved back to Paris in the early 1980s to take charge of La Ferme Irelandaise, a restaurant supported by the Irish Farmers’ Association and its insurance arm, FBD, to showcase the best of Irish produce in the French capital.
Robinson's vision for La Ferme Irelandaise was to present such produce using classical French cuisine, employing a nephew of the designer Givenchy to oversee the decoration and presentation of the restaurant, telling Le Monde in an interview that he wished to avoid a "folklorique" version of Irish food.
Nick Robinson remarks of this that “some Irish visitors thought that the menus and the service were too French,” and after a time, his brother resigned, to be replaced by Myrtle Allen.
Robinson’s life then took another, and highly different direction. He became involved with development aid in Africa, especially in Madagascar, a former French colony, where he worked, firstly for US Aid, and then for French NGOs, and where he met Nathalie, a Malagasy woman who was to be his partner for the rest of his life.
This was preceded by a turbulent time emotionally, which had seen him marry twice after his divorce from Christine, to, respectively, Rosemary and Sophie, both of which marriages also ended in divorce.
A keen and gifted amateur photographer, an exhibition of his pictures was held at the Gallery of Photography in Dublin in the late 1980s.
Peter MacPherson Robinson is survived by Nathalie, and each of his three former wives, his children Sarah, Emily, Patrick, Lucy and Matthew, and by his brothers Nick and Andrew. His elder brother Michael predeceased him.