Foodies Fight Back with Lucinda
Thursday 22 April 2021
THE CHEF
Helming the legendary Il Primo restaurant for many years, Anita Thoma is one of Dublin’s best-known chefs. She tells me what she’s been doing during Covid.
“Although I did my actual training in Cathal Brugha Street, it was my father really who prepared me for my career in hospitality. He came to Dublin with a brigade of chefs from Switzerland in the late 1940s. I started in the mid-1980s, and something I learned early on, particularly as a woman in the industry, is that you need to work hard to survive. Never has this been truer than now.”
Anita was recovering from surgery on her hand and in the middle of working through job offers when the pandemic hit. She’s spent the last year working on herself physically and is in the best shape she’s been in for ages, but, like others, she felt scared, uncertain and fearful of what was to come.
“The strength I’d previously called upon to see me through challenging work situations was called for once more. I started cooking again using ingredients from my own garden and it centred and calmed me. I found handwritten recipes of my mother’s, and I made her brack. The house was filled with food memories of happier times."
lucindaosullivan.com
First Published In The Sunday Independent