Coulan takes over from Copper Kettle

What’s the Kilcullen link between a village hut in the Gambia in Africa, and Patsy Simion of Calverstown?

The first is Patsy’s new restaurant Coulan Cafe, and the hut was where Patsy lived for half a year, showing a local restaurant how to cook basic western dishes and teaching children in the essentials of reading and writing. That was during an an epic drive from Germany to Senegal with her future husband Sergio, a South African of Italian extraction.

Calverstown is where they have lived for the last two years, during which time Patsy ‘had her eye on’ the Copper Kettle cafe. “If it ever came up for lease, I wanted it,” she says. “And it did, a couple of months ago.”

In the restaurant trade all her life, Patsy worked as a chef in Ireland before going to Australia and moving into ‘front of house’. Then she returned to Europe, lived in Bavaria for about eight years, and met Sergio.

“This was back in the late 1990s, and we decided to do the African trip. I’ve always loved travelling, and going to Africa had been a dream of mine since childhood. We did it in an ancient Land Rover which Sergio picked up in England.”

From Germany they drove through France, Spain and across to Tangiers in Morocco. “Morocco was fabulous, then we had to convoy with the military for six days through minefields in no-mans-land between there and Mauritania.”

When they finally crossed into Mauritania, now on the Sahara Desert, she recalls it getting ‘a bit scary’. “Suddenly everybody’s a bit darker, and you get customs and police and army at the borders, which are notorious in Africa. Everybody wants your money. I was wheeling and dealing all the time to make sure that none of them got away with anything.”

But the drive, some of it on the tough Paris-Dakar rally route, was ‘stunning and brilliant’. “Especially driving along the beaches. When we got to Senegal it was all lush and green again, the real Africa with snakes and excitement. It was lively and musical and a beautiful country.”

Through the Gambia (“surrounded by Senegal, small and English-speaking”) to Guinea they continued, sometimes helping out other travellers in their more modern 4x4s which didn’t quite have the abilities of the ancient Land Rover. “We met some overland travellers who had spent more than a year in preparation. We had just packed 300 lollipops for the children and about 50 kilos of pasta ...”

They decided to go back to the Gambia and stay around for a while. Sergio left Patsy there after three months to go back to work, and when she came home to Ireland he followed her and they married.

“I’ve worked in Dublin since, with Conrad Gallagher, and in Pasta Fresca off Grafton Street. For most of the last few years I was in The Gables in Foxrock, which specialises in breakfast brunch, lunch, and dinners.”

Opening in Kilcullen rather than larger Naas or Newbridge was a deliberate choice. “For a start, my brother Shay O’Mahoney lives here, married to Yvonne Goulding, so I knew half the town anyhow. And I like the local community feel of Kilcullen.”

With two small babies in the equation, Patsy is taking small steps with her venture. “Breakfast, brunch, lunch. Maybe down the line, I’ll look at opening in the evenings. For now, I’ve just fulfilled another dream, having my own place.”

Brian Byrne.

(This article originally appeared on the Kilcullen page of the Kildare Nationalist.)