WHEN Conor Gadd thinks about food, he thinks about two women in their seventies in North Belfast.
“My parents worked a lot, and I was brought up by two ladies in their 70s. They were both fabulous cooks.”
"So while a lot of my friends were being brought up on Goodfella’s pizza, I was being treated to really high-calibre food day in and day out. That was a really formative experience for me.”
He still speaks about their cooking with reverence.
“Kathleen’s lasagna is still the best lasagna I’ve probably ever had. I have been a professional chef for over 20 years, but if you were to ask anyone in my family who they would want to cook their last meal, they would all probably say Kathleen.”
That grounding in home cooking and community would eventually carry him far beyond Belfast.
Almost 20 years ago, he moved to London and began working at a restaurant in Covent Garden but found himself frustrated by the limited room to progress.
Chopped beef with anchovy and rosemary dressing (Photo by Burro)Not far away, however, a small neighbourhood Italian restaurant was building a reputation.
Gadd lived close to Trullo and had heard “wonderful things”. He arranged to meet the owners, Tim Siadatan and Jordan Frieda. “I had a great conversation with them,” he says, “and now we are here 16 years later.”
He joined Trullo in 2010 as head chef, and around 2015, his role deepened when he bought a stake in Trullo.
By 2022, after years of growth and the turbulence of the pandemic, “We came to a deal whereby I became the managing director of Trullo.”
With Trullo stable, Gadd began to consider a second act.
He hired an agent and began viewing properties. Then he saw a site back in a familiar postcode.
“I remember playing London Monopoly as a kid, and if someone had said that one day I would own a 140-seat restaurant in Covent Garden, I would have laughed at them.”
Quail and nduja (Photo by Burro)The name itself carries a story and a joke. “I was having lunch with Jordan, and he said, ‘You know, you should call it Burro,’” Gadd recalls.
As a fluent Spanish speaker, he was baffled. “My first reaction was, why would I open a restaurant called Donkey? He was like, No, it means butter in Italian.”
The dual meaning sealed it. “I really chuckled at that. It’s a little inside joke and doesn’t take itself too seriously.”
Conceptually, the restaurant represents something deeper.
“What was really important to me was to link Ireland to Italy,” he says.
“Growing up in Ireland but having spent a lot of time in Italy, those two countries have a lot in common. They are both family-led; family is at the centre of everything they do.”
He sees parallels in how both nations project themselves globally.
“If you look at them on the world stage, brand-wise, they are both two of the strongest brands in the world, with pizza, pasta, Guinness and Irish bars.”
The result, he says, is “Italian food with Irish hospitality and community.”
Some of their delicious food (Photo by Burro)Despite nearly two decades in London, Ireland remains central to his identity.
“My best friends live there. Ireland is just a cracking place. Just going down the pub and having a couple of pints of Guinness.”
That sense of belonging informs his ambitions for Burro.
“In London it takes a while to find your community, but in Ireland, if you were to move there, I feel within a week you would know everyone on your street and be popping around for cups of tea."
Covent Garden may be seen as transient and tourist-heavy, but Gadd sees something more enduring.
"Part of opening Burro is to create a restaurant for the people who live there, but also people who are going to the theatre can pop into what feels like a local restaurant.”
“It’s that sense of place that Ireland does so well,” he says, “that I would love to bring.”
Burro will soft launch on March 6, 7 and 8, before officially opening its doors on March 11, another chapter in a journey that began in a Belfast kitchen, with a lasagna that still sets the standard.
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