The 2026 Oscars were great for Ireland.
Maggie O’Farrell was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for her novel, Hamnet – the biggest film of the year – and the film itself won the Oscar for Best Picture. Meanwhile, Kerry native Jessie Buckley, who played the lead role in Hamnet, took home the Oscar for Best Actress. For another film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Richard Baneham won the Oscar for Visual Effects.
A few rooms over, an Irish pastry chef sprayed intricate chocolate replicas of Oscar trophies in edible gold. Her dessert station was located next to where the actual trophies were being engraved with the winners’ names. At the post-ceremony reception, Domnhall Gleeson stopped by and, as they chatted, asked the chef if she was Irish. “I am,” she proudly replied. Smiling broadly, he wished her a great night.
This chef is Co Limerick native Niamh Larkin, and she did, indeed, have a great night at the Oscars.
“Even now, I get goosebumps thinking about it,” she says. “My executive chef had been going [to the Oscars] a few years running, but it had never worked out for me to go [with my kids being so small]. This year, it all worked out. I just thought, ‘This is my year.’”
But how does an Irish pastry chef end up catering to the Oscars in Los Angeles? It was actually quite the journey.
Limerick to London
Niamh has been based in London for nearly 20 years. She is executive pastry chef at CUT by Wolfgang Puck at 45 Park Lane. Puck is a world-famous chef, mainly based in California, but with restaurants throughout the world. For decades, he has been the chef of choice for official Oscar celebrations.
Thanks to the high-end nature of her work in London, Niamh has plenty of celebrity stories. Ever the professional, though, she tends to keep any encounters close to her chest. 45 Park Lane is part of London’s Dorchester collection of hotels and overlooks the city’s Hyde Park. CUT is one of two on-site restaurants and the only Wolfgang Puck restaurant in London.
To the average person, life as an executive pastry chef in London might sound stressful, but Niamh absolutely loves what she does each day. Having grown up on a dairy farm near Reens, Co Limerick, she is no stranger to hard work.
Irish Country Living caught up with Niamh and her parents, Tom and Anne, on a recent visit home.
“Growing up on a farm gave my siblings and I a good grounding for hard work,” she says. “I have always loved the outdoors. Growing up, I loved helping my dad and grandmother on the farm. Looking back, it’s so different from my life now.
“I was so lucky to have women in my life who were amazing cooks,” she adds. “My grandmother made the most delicious bread; she used no weighing scales and never had a recipe, but that bread was always perfect – the same goes for her tarts. My mother could rustle up a meal for 10 silage workers in 30 minutes – starter, main course and dessert. There is a serious underestimation [out there] of how much effort it takes to feed that many people.”
Pathway to pastry
If you ask Niamh, she will (very humbly) say she just “fell into” high-end gastronomy. Like so many great chefs, it is clear that her love of food started at home and grew as she gained experience in the sector.
“I worked in a hotel in Adare as a waitress and I was really fond of the kitchen, because I’ve always loved food,” she says. “The head chef [at the time] asked me if I’d be interested in coming into the kitchen and I said I’d love to, so I worked the kitchen in the morning and did waitressing in the evenings.
“Then I decided to go to catering college,” she continues. “I wasn’t academic, but a friend of mine said I should really think about [hospitality] as a career. I went to Galway [GMIT, now Atlantic Technological University], and started off fresh. I was so lucky, the lecturers were amazing. I never missed a day or a class, I loved everything about it.
“One lecturer, Pat Conway, who sadly passed away recently, always sent three promising students to London. So, in my year I was chosen to go to The Dorchester.” Niamh was offered full-time employment with The Dorchester and stayed on, in various roles and locations, before joining the team at CUT when it first opened in 2011. In 2015, she became their executive pastry chef and has been in this role ever since.
In 2022, she was featured in the annual Murphia List, which compiles the Irish crème de la crème of London’s food and drink industry. Now living in Ascot with her husband and two children, Niamh truly enjoys her role and has achieved a good work-life balance.
“Pastry was always a passion of mine; there is an art and a preciseness to it,” she says. “I suppose a lot of my success has come from people believing in me. I went from a chef de partie to a sous chef very quickly – I jumped a few steps. I was just very lucky: people believed in me and I loved what I did.
“To be part of The Dorchester collection nearly 20 years on, I can honestly say I still love what I do. I love going to work every morning and I get to spend time with my kids every evening.”
Niamh encourages any young food lover interested in a career in hospitality to just go for it.
“Don’t let anything hold you back,” she says. “There’s always a way to get to where you want to go. Try to work in as many different places as you can. Get that exposure so you have an idea of where you want to go; the industry is so broad.”
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