Restaurant Chestnut closes in West Cork after eight starred years
Chef Rob Krawczyk and Elaine Fleming will serve their last dinner on 30 October, ending nine seasons and eight consecutive years with a Michelin star in Ballydehob.
Restaurant Chestnut closes in Ballydehob on 30 October, ending nine dinner seasons and eight consecutive years with a Michelin star.
Chef Rob Krawczyk and his partner Elaine Fleming opened the 18-seat dining room in March 2018, inside a 200-year-old former pub on Staball Hill known locally as the Chestnut Tree. An inspector visited within three weeks of opening, and the star followed that same autumn.
The couple held it every year since, through roughly two years of pandemic restrictions and a St Patrick's Day weekend reopening in 2021. Earlier this year, Restaurant Chestnut was named Best Restaurant in Cork at the Munster regional final of the Irish Restaurant Awards 2026.
A Michelin star did not need saving; the couple simply chose to stop before it did.
Reservations stay open through the final service. What follows is undisclosed, though both say they are staying in West Cork.
Why Restaurant Chestnut is closing now
Krawczyk points to the schedule a star demands: a team working six or seven days to keep a dining room open four or five. “The high intensity and long hours required for a Michelin-starred venue prompted us to end this chapter and try new things,” he said.
Fleming frames the timing as deliberate. “We are ending the business on a high note after nine successful dinner seasons,” she said, adding that she would rather close while the restaurant is still in full swing than wait for it to slow down.
Neither has named a next project. Krawczyk grew up near Schull, trained in special effects before switching to kitchens, and worked under Richard Corrigan at Bentley's in London, staged at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, then helped the House Restaurant in Ardmore earn its star before running the Chop House in Lismore, which took a Michelin Bib Gourmand.
A kitchen built on West Cork producers
Fleming, who grew up in County Meath and trained in textile design, met Krawczyk while working as a wedding coordinator at Tankardstown House. At Restaurant Chestnut, the pair built their menus around named growers, fishermen and potters from the surrounding parish rather than a fixed script, a sourcing habit that shaped the small room as much as the cooking did.
The closure adds West Cork to a run of Michelin-starred kitchens shutting this year by choice rather than for lack of trade, a distinction the couple have been careful to draw, even as other kitchens picked up new stars this week.
