Seamus and Kevin Sheridan started young.
Seamus was 22 years old when he opened The Blue Raincoat Restaurant in 1990, at Spanish Arch in Galway city. When they folded out the first Sheridan’s Cheesemongers trestle table in the Galway market, and followed with a Cheese Kiosk in the Galway City shopping centre, Kevin was 21 years old.
The brothers have been working it out for three decades now. Over the years, they have been making it up as they went along: “Perhaps because of our lack of management experience or just our personalities, we have always worked with our employees in a very unstructured and fluid manner,” they write in Counter Culture: The Sheridans Guide to Cheese.
That makes it seem as if their growth and their success has been accidental. In fact, their somewhat anarchic manner of working is the key to understanding why Sheridans is unique, and why they have attracted so many singular people to work with them over the years.
In 1907, at the International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam, Emma Goldman and Max Baginski laid out a template which explains Sheridans:
“The greater the number of strong, self-conscious individuals in an organisation, the lesser the danger of stagnation and the more intense its vital element… In short, anarchism struggles for a form of social organisation that will ensure well-being for all.”
Sitting in the wine bar, upstairs at Sheridans on Churchyard Street on a Wednesday evening, we certainly felt plenty of that “well-being for all.” With a plate of cheese, some crackers and chutney and marinated peppers, and a glass of good wine on the counter in front of us, all was well with the world. The long-promised anarchist paradise had surely arrived.
Sheridans Wine Bar is a place like no other, and it is one of the defining destinations in Galway city. It seems casual, as if the brothers had just clattered together a bunch of stuff assembled from warehouse sales. But the Sheridans secret is to make it seem simple, whilst concealing the thought and effort that goes into making something feel just right. The Italians call it Sprezzatura, and everyone in the Sheridans team has it.
Their almost casual expertise extends to not just knowing and understanding the cheeses and charcuterie they serve, but also to knowing and understanding the many wines on the shelves of the Wine Bar. Each week they select different wines to serve by the glass – 3 whites, 2 reds, 2 rosés, a fizz – and along with the cheese and charcuterie boards there are two baked cheeses, including Cooleeney from County Tipperary, and a vegetarian mezze board.
Our cheese board comprised Young Buck from County Down, a Swiss alpine schnebelhorn, a perfectly ripe Delice de Bourgogne, and a fascinating Mona Lisa pecorino. They were served with Magpie Bakery bread from the city, some quince, Sheridans chutney, marinated peppers and a good Italian olive oil.
With a glass of Zelen, from the Vipava Valley in Slovenia, this was some sort of bliss, not least the fact that the wine cost €9 per glass and the cheeseboard cost €20. Do the Math: less than €20 each for sublime eating and fascinating drinking. Small wonder that being in Sheridans induces a feeling of “well-being for all.”