Youen Jacob: French restaurateur brought a Breton touch to Baltimore

Youen Jacob, who died just two days after his 80th birthday, was a French restaurateur, entrepreneur, west Cork enthusiast and bon vivant who brought a Gallic – and indeed Breton – touch to the village of Baltimore and its environs for almost half a century.

Born in Quimper, Brittany, he first made landfall on Sherkin Island 48 years ago. His failure to observe the usual orthodoxies of international travel in those pre-EU days – he simply got off a boat and stayed – led to his first introduction to the convoluted ways of Irish bureaucracy. These were to be encountered again later in contexts as diverse as salmon fishing, planning and the parking regulations in Skibbereen.

On Sherkin, he met Mary O’Neill, the teacher in the island’s school. Mary’s independence of spirit and impatience with small-mindedness echoed his own breezy creativity and passion for making the world a better place. They married in 1974 and constituted a remarkable partnership that was to last until Mary’s untimely death a decade or so ago.

Superb reputation

Jacob ran a pub in Sherkin for a time. He and Mary then went into the fish business in

Castletownbere

and other west Cork locations before he opened Chez Youen, a classic French fish restaurant, in Baltimore in 1979. The restaurant rapidly acquired a superb reputation and featured in the

Egon Ronay Guide

for a decade.

Diners could find themselves rubbing shoulders, not only with Youen's local friends and acquaintances, but with a taoiseach or two, lawyers on furlough from the Betelgeuse tanker inquiry and a clientele that included – in 1998 – the film star Claudia Cardinale. Cardinale was so impressed by Baltimore and by Jacob that she arranged a part for him in the Italian mini-series Mia Mine Forever, which she was filming there.

Horses were another pattern and trotters and sulkies in particular. Maintaining that Irish horse-flesh needed a transfusion, he imported a winner – Jolly Castle – from France, and his life-long association with his fellow trotting enthusiast, Jimmy Sheehy (who spoke movingly at his funeral in Rath) led to a number of triumphs in that unusual sport in the 1980s.

There was hardly a local development in Baltimore in the years after 1979 with which he was not associated. Working on a range of committees with the Bushes, Cotters and many others, he helped to put Baltimore on the map. He was involved in the twinning of Baltimore with the Breton fishing town of Penmarc’h in 1984, with the Glenans sailing school, with the inaugural Taste of Baltimore festival in 1991 and with the Baltimore 2000 Festival.

Inimitable style

A decade ago, Jacob celebrated his 70th birthday in inimitable style, by roasting an entire pig in the square in Baltimore and putting an ad in the

Southern Star

inviting all and sundry to partake, not only of the roast pork, but of beer, wine and salads, all at his expense.

By then his empire had already spread. He had opened a second, more modest restaurant, La Jolie Brise, which was a boon to holiday-making families; he bought a local pub, and opened a guesthouse which was transformed very quickly into a small but sought-after hotel.

He closed the original Chez Youen restaurant in 2010, but only to transfer it to new premises above the pub, with a view of Baltimore harbour. He embellished it with a 16th century wooden fireplace from the Loire Valley. He wholesaled wine (French, of course) and had an interest in a modest vineyard in France whose products featured on his own menus.

He had planned to celebrate his 80th birthday by roasting a cow in Baltimore. Although this was not to be, his apotheosis was no less memorable. It involved his final journey, fittingly also by sea, and accompanied by a small flotilla of boats, across the harbour to Sherkin Island, where he was buried beside Mary O’Neill in the old Franciscan Friary.

He is survived by his three sons Youen, Louis and Pascal.