Seamus Bracken Butcher Shop team have meat to please you

Butcher Seamus Bracken is celebrating 35 years in business

Award winning butcher Seamus Bracken is celebrating 35 years in business at his food emporium on the Lynn Road, Mullingar, next to O’Brien’s Centra. In fact, this is his 51st Christmas in butchering, having started at the age of 14 years.

“After my Inter Cert in Killucan Vocational School, I started butchering in Kinnegad in 1974. I had been working part-time in a bar and took the job in Eamon Monaghan’s butcher’s shop for £6 a week,” he recalls with a chuckle in an interview with the Westmeath Examiner this week. He went on to work in what was then 3 Guys, now Tesco, in Mullingar for the next eight years. “There were 15 working on the meat counter at that time – it was a very busy meat counter and among the best in the country. That was when there were real butchers in supermarkets,” Seamus remarked.

He also worked in Buckley’s “old supermarket” in Mullingar and subsequently worked for Ben Scally in Tullamore before starting his own business in Mullingar in 1990, in the Clonmore Shopping Centre, a premises he bought and then sold to move to his current location.

About 10 years ago, Seamus’s Coq au Vin dish won an All-Ireland cookery competition for which the first prize was a week in Ballymaloe Cookery School. “I loved every minute of it; I met Darina and Rory and Rachel and had lectures with them all,” he remembers. “I always loved cooking.”

Seamus is a native of Kinnegad and one of nine children born to Shay and Kitty Bracken. Shay was a tailor and Kitty was “a very good cook and could provide for a large family with very little money”.

His brother Joe has a pub in Kinnegad while the other family members live in Ireland and work in health and education. Seamus has two daughters Laura and Louise and two grandchildren. He lives with his partner Yolanta at Dalystown, Mullingar.

Despite three hip replacements, Seamus is an avid swimmer and regularly goes cold water swimming without a wet suit. In 2009 he did the Ironman triathlons in Austria and in Switzerland and the Half Ironman triathlons in Wales and Portugal.

He played football with Kinnegad Slashers and was secretary of St Finian’s GAA, now Coralstown Kinnegad GAA, in 1977. His father played in goals for Westmeath and won an All-Ireland medal in 1929, “the first one won by Westmeath in Junior, and he played senior too”. His father’s cousin Pat ‘The Steel Bar’ Bracken also played on the 1929 winning team.

Seamus also enjoys a round of golf with his friends at the Kinnegad Academy and is a member of Mullingar Golf Club, and he enjoys a night out with his pals in Wallace’s of Dalystown. “It’s a good little local and there are a few great characters out there,” he said.

35 years in business, and a Mecca for food lovers

Bracken’s Craft Butchers on the Lynn Road, Mullingar, which is celebrating 35 years in business, is a Mecca for food lovers and those who love to cook without the faff.

Brackens make their own sausages and burgers and the many awards they have won for them are proudly displayed in the shop. Their rashers are very tasty too. They have also won awards for their Hereford and Angus steaks, which Seamus proudly declares are “the best steaks in town” from grass-fed, dry-aged beef. Their cook-in-the-bag beef comes complete with onion and garlic and a bit of rosemary, and most important of all, they explain how to cook it to perfection. It’s a real crowd pleaser.

“We talk to our customers, we pride ourselves on giving generous time and attention to their needs and questions. We are real butchers, not a picture of a butcher. I have lads here with me over 30 years – Mark O’Brien, Ken Orme and Damien Kiernan, who are full-time, and part-time – Enda Daly and Dylan Feery, as well as Norma Pentony, who is our bookkeeper, and “two all-time greats” – Camillus Cleary and Jimmy Tuite and Louise Bracken, “all part of the dream team”.

They stock lots of ready to go dinners, beef, lamb, pork, venison, goose, duck, all homemade, and a huge selection of glazes and sauces as well as jams and chutneys, all locally sourced. They do ready-to-cook vegetables, hand cut chips, peeled potatoes, stuffed chicken breasts and loads of different chicken sauces such as Cajun, sweet chilli, garlic and herbs. They also do stuffed pork chops, beef burgers with black pudding or cheese, and lots more.

“Ready-to-cook products and meals are especially popular nowadays; convenience is key as customers can just stick them in the oven or the air fryer, and an important advantage is that there is no waste,” Seamus explained.

“We have never been so busy,” he reports, adding that his operation has flourished at the Lynn Road site. “The O’Brien family are our landlords and they are good people, we work well together and help each other out,” he said.

Advice part of the friendly service

A trip to Bracken’s Craft Butchers at Lynn Road, Mullingar is a real treat for those who love food and cooking it. And if you need any advice on how to do the cooking, their staff are on-hand to suggest and to recommend.

Their Craft Butchers Christmas Cookbook and Calendar provide lots of delicious recipes and handy tips. They tell you how to know your meat is cooked through, how much to allow per person, what seasoning to put on what meats, how to produce the most spectacular roasties, mash and roast parsnips, and even how to make Brussels sprouts appetising.

The calendar gives you advice on what to look for when buying a steak and how to cook it to perfection. There are recipes for prime rib roast, beef casserole and Irish stew, beef and pork burgers, porchetta, slow roasted pork neck fillet, creamy Dijon mushroom pork chops, stuffed chicken breast, chicken curry, shoulder of lamb, chilli con carne, and lots more, all mouth-watering.