Ian Orr, Chef Patron & Co-Owner of Browns Restaurant Group & Ardtara Country House Hotel in Northern Ireland.
Ian Orr, Chef Patron & Co-Owner of Browns Restaurant Group & Ardtara Country House Hotel in Northern Ireland.Tipped as one of Ireland’s top talents, Ian Orr trained under the late Robbie Millar at Northern Ireland’s formative Michelin-starred restaurant Shanks before moving to London’s River Cafe and then to Head Chef at Rathmullan House Hotel in Donegal.
Since opening Browns Restaurant in 2009, Ian has opened Browns in Town, Browns on the Green and, in 2014, Browns at Ardtara Country House — all with the help of his business partner Marcus Roulston plus his personally trained and highly talented team. Ian won Georgina Campbell’s Ireland Chef of the Year 2013, was on the Great British Menu series 8 for the Comic Relief and has been named five times in the Bridgestone/Mckenna Top 100 Restaurants and Top Ten Chefs to Watch. In the Good Food Eating Guide he also won the Best Chef in Northern Ireland for the last 7 years. His flagship Browns Restaurant has been named Best Restaurant in County L’Derry every year since 2010 and Best Restaurant in all Northern Ireland in 2013 by the Restaurants Association of Ireland (RAI).
In 2015, “Browns” became the only restaurant in Northern Ireland to be invited into the prestigious “Ireland’s Blue Book” association of hotels and restaurants and his newly acquired Ardtara Country House Hotel won the Best Hotel Restaurant in Northern Ireland (RAI).
Ian enjoys the entertainment and educational values of cooking demonstrations. From demonstrations in the private homes of celebrities to a televised cooking demo at the world’s oldest and largest Flower Show in Philadelphia USA, Ian has performed far and wide. But he is particularly proud of offering his talents for charity demos to raise funds for local communities all across Ireland. The most recent of these were a demo for the BBC to promote his home town – Derry/L’derry – when the Clipper Ships were docked and a charity demo for the National Lottery Fund where he cooked lunch for his Granny’s lunch club – filmed by the BBC.