A lecturer in the GMIT school of hotel and catering has been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Panel of Chefs of Ireland.
Johnny Carroll, a lecturer in professional cookery at the Dublin Road campus, was awarded the prestigious award for his work in training and educating young chefs for various national and international panel competitions, for promoting Irish food products at home and abroad and contributing to the Irish tourism industry, for his charitable fund-raising work for Croí, Share a Dream Foundation, Meals on Wheels, and the Irish Cancer Society, and for his overall work in promoting the panel.
Mr Carroll has written several books on the Panel of Chefs of Ireland, which was founded in 1958, and was one of its key supporters when it reformed in the 1970s. He was the driving force behind many of the successful presidents of the panel, some of whom are graduates of GMIT and among them John Kelly who is an international panel judge and chairperson of the World Association of Chefs. In GMIT Mr Carroll has prepared numerous students for international and national competitions and many of them are highly successful out in industry today.
The GMIT lecturer has held a number of positions in the panel including national vice-president, chairman of a panel branch, secretary, treasurer, PRO, and manager of three gold-winning branch teams (Chefs Ireland ).
In GMIT and outside he has several claims to fame — he cooked meals for John Lennon of the Beatles when working as executive chef in the Great Southern Hotel in Mulrany in Co Mayo, which was one of the top hotels in the country at the time. The Beatle was staying on a nearby island and Mr Carroll was flown by helicopter many evenings to cook for Lennon, Yoko Ono, and their friends.
In addition to lecturing in GMIT, he managed and trained the GMIT college soccer team that won the All-Ireland in 1981, a competition set up by Fáilte Ireland in conjunction with all the other catering colleges in the country. A love of sport and food runs in the family — his niece Amanda Greensmith has played rugby for Ireland and is currently coaching rugby teams in Australia, and his nephew Colin Greensmith is an award-winning chef who has followed in his uncle’s footsteps, having cooked for celebrities including singer Chris de Burgh, racing personality Eddie Jordan, and actor Pierce Brosnan.
GMIT colleagues say he is an excellent singer, dancer, and master story-teller who has been involved in numerous Tops of the Town and drama societies through the years. His greatest claim to fame however, according to colleagues, is his attendance at a unique sports event some 30 years ago — Thomond Park when Munster beat the All-Blacks for the first (and only ) time.
