Why Hatch?
The name is from a dairy that existed in the late 19th century on nearby Leeson Street. Owned by two brothers, they subsequently bought an arable farm north of Dublin and raised beef cattle. With beef and milk being two key Irish ingredients we thought the name rather fitting. But its not just milk and meat we’ve focused on. From rapeseed oil to flour, from eggs, to the salad leaves on your plate, we’ve focused on everything being Irish.
So we set about designing a menu that could work through the day, would be quick and easy and celebrate Irish ingredients.
We’re rather proud of our suppliers, many of them, just like us, focused on real food without
fuss but with lots of attention and care.
We’re not just about beef and Guinness stew however (although its a dish we are rather partial to). The idea is to be modern in our approach. So we have a short wine list and an even shorter but really exciting
collection of Irish craft beers.
Our Suppliers
A few of the producers we love to brag about
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Glenilen. Cork. Valerie and Alan Kingston. All our butter and yoghurt. You can taste the difference.
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Kilbeggan porridge. Irish organic oats, not all 'Irish' porridge can say that.
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Jams, marmalade and chutneys. Our recipes, made for us by the wonderful Helen Gee of G's jams.
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Blaas come from Walsh's Bakehouse in Waterford. Dermot has achieved PDO status in Europe for his blaas, a bit like an AOC ranking for wine. What makes them different? Time. He proves them overnight to develop texture and flavour.
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You can make bacon many different ways. O’Neills dry cure bacon is, as it says, dry cured. Why does that matter? No water means no phosphates. And less salt. The cure is designed to make the most of the main ingredient. So what you taste is meat. It’s the best rasher we’ve found and we’ve had our fair share.
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Cheese: All our cheese is artisian, meaning small, farmhouse and often family made. Coolea is handmade by Dick and Sinead Willems (correct) in Cork. It's a Gouda style made from cows milk. St Tola is made in Co Clare, St Gall is made by Frank and Gudrun Shinnick’, whose’s cheesemaking prowess is rooted in Switzerland. Named after the monastery St Gallen near Appenzell, this brine-washed cheese has all the characteristics of a fine Swiss cheese with the rich, earthy creaminess from the Irish countryside.
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Smoked fish: mackerel and salmon are from The Burren Smokehouse located in Co Clare. How good is it? Don't just take our word, Dean and Deluca in New York use it, as does Fortnum and Mason in London. When the Queen visited Ireland she dined on Burren Smokehouse smoked salmon. We don't quite have the same airs and graces!
Hatch & Sons
1872 – 1953
In 1872, William Hatch, owner of a successful hackney cab business at 16 Duke Street, could see the writing, not on the wall, but in the tram lines that had been laid on the streets of Dublin despite the protests of businesses in the city centre. Service by the Dublin Tramways Company from Dublin to Terenure began on 1 February that year.
On 29 February, William had an advertisement placed in the Freeman’s Journal: “Mr. William Hatch to sell by auction his well selected plant—cabs, cars, horses, and harnesses…The cabs are all recently built by Messrs. Sanderson and Son…; the cars are of superior style and finish; the horses are fresh, strong, and in the best hard fed condition…”
William threw up the business he knew so well, an occupation he had shared with his father, Hugh, and started a dairy at 6 Lower Leeson Street.
By May that year, he had already become involved with the Dublin Dairy Proprietors’ Association and had employed a man from the South Dublin Union workhouse, and by July he had acquired a dairy yard in Cork Street. William was 53 years of age when he made this great career change.
His wife, Jane, was also rather enterprising. The previous occupant of their Leeson Street shop and home had operated an employment agency, so Jane started recruiting: cooks, housemaids, footmen, parlour maids, and children’s nurses.
Their eldest son, William junior, was something of a tearaway, and several times found himself in court for ‘driving furiously’ one time through Lucan, another time through Killester. He, too, was a cab driver, and apparently was given to racing with other cab drivers—presumably (though we can’t be certain) without passengers on board!
But William and Jane had another son , Joe, who was steady, reliable, and a hard worker. Joe would rise at 2am to start milking for morning deliveries, and then began milking again at noon for the evening trade. In addition to the dairy business, Joe was very active in the life of Dublin. In 1895, he was elected to Dublin City Council, where he served until 1908, most frequently on the Public Health Committee. He also served on the centenary commemoration committee for the 1798 rebellion along with Maud Gonne.
Joe was a progressive man. His was the first herd in Dublin to be certified TB-free. For a number of years, he was President of the Dublin Cowkeepers’ Association, and he travelled to the UK to keep himself informed about the dairy business. In 1903, he bought land so that he could keep his cattle out of the city during the summer months. The land, at Drimnagh, had a castle (the last moated castle in Ireland), which he restored, and where he celebrated the silver anniversary of his marriage to Mary Connell of Dolphin’s Barn in 1904, and the marriage of his daughter Mary in 1910 at Drimnagh was a splendid social event.
Following Joe’s death in 1918, the business was run, in accordance with the wishes he expressed in his will, by his two elder sons, Joseph Aloysius (Louis) and Hugh Hatch. The herd, the dairy, and the castle remained in the Hatch family until Louis died in 1952.
The spirit of enterprise ran strong in Hatch family. In addition to being a cab owner and driver, William’s father (Hugh) had a bottle dealership and then a marine store in Mercer Street with his brother Patrick. And Joe’s grandson, Jim Monks, operated a business in Leeson Street in the 1960s that sold catering equipment to hotels, restaurants and institutions. In his seventies, he operated a small bakery in Rathfarnham.