The Belfast man who has created some of the world’s most celebrated bars is back in his hometown this week to unveil the plans for his biggest venture to date.
Ardoyne native Sean Muldoon, best known for The Dead Rabbit in New York, is set to launch Hazel and Apple in Charlestown, South Carolina, later this year.
Now aged 52, the North Belfast man expects the multi-million pound project could well be his last before eventually re-settling into retirement in the city of his birth.
“Hazel and Apple is a big undertaking, it’s completely different than Dead Rabbit,” he says.
“It’s a 320 capacity bar all on one floor. It has so many different components to it.”
Back in The Merchant Hotel on Monday night, where he helped develop one of the top hotel bars in the world almost two decades ago, the cocktail expert will give the locals a sneak peak of what’s in store in Charlestown.
Sean Muldoon’s career in pubs dates back more than 30 years, to the old Regency Hotel on Botanic Avenue, where he pulled his first pints around 1992.
After leaving school at 16 without any qualifications, the Ardoyne man dreamed of becoming a songwriter. And while he did dip his toe into music, he admits it didn’t really work out.
Instead, by 1996 he decided if it he was going to be working in pubs, he was going to be the best barman in the world.
Thanks to his own zeal for self-improvement, and taking the example of early idols like Jaz Mooney and Morgan Watson, by 2005 Sean Muldoon had the reputation in Belfast as the man you talk to if you’re interested in opening a top cocktail bar.
Billy Wolsey made such an approach 2005, where he was a bit taken back by the Ardoyne man’s promise that he would open the world’s best bar in his new five star Belfast hotel, The Merchant.
“Bill thought I’m either dealing with a mad man or I’m dealing with a genius,” recalls Sean.
But just a few years after making that promise, The Merchant was named the world’s best hotel bar at the 2009 Tales of the Cocktail Festival in New Orleans, regarded by many as the most prestigious awards ceremony in the cocktail and spirits industry.
For Sean, the global recognition was a double edged sword. He couldn’t shake off the feeling that he had reached the ceiling in the north.
“If you really want to excel, you have to think outside the box and think the world is your oyster, not just Belfast,” he says.
That thinking eventually resulted in a move across the Atlantic with The Merchant’s by now legendary barman Jack McGarry.
With the backing of Galway native Conor Allen, a regular in The Merchant, who spent his time between New York and Belfast, Sean and Jack spent headed across the Atlantic, where two-and-a-half years of graft produced The Dead Rabbit in New York’s financial district.
If Sean had the vision and the plan, Jack had the flair that drew people in and often left them hypnotised.
“People have said watching Jack as a bartender was like watching George Best play football,” says Sean.
“You just couldn’t stop watching him.”
A succession of prestigious industry accolades followed almost immediately after The Dead Rabbit opened on Water Street, close to New York’s Battery Park in 2012.
It culminated in 2016, when the Irish pub landed the highly coveted Drinks International title of ‘World’s Best Bar’.
But like many bars across the World, Covid took its toll on The Dead Rabbit and its owners.
Sean says it exhausted him. More significantly, it inadvertently led to a parting of ways in The Dead Rabbit partnership.
While Sean and Jack had agreed to expand, it was the pace and nature of the expansion that they differed on.
The result was an amiable parting, whereby Sean took on the location in Charlestown earmarked for a new Dead Rabbit, while Jack set upon his plan to rapidly expand the Dead Rabbit brand.
“When I think back of where me and Jack came from, and I think back of when we first landed in America, I’ve nothing but happiness for how he has ended up and for how I have ended up,” says Sean.
“I’m living my best life in Charlestown. It’s the happiest I’ve been to be honest.
“It’s a beautiful place with a lot of opportunity.
Like The Dead Rabbit, Hazel and Apple is a partnership, with Jillian Vose, who Sean says was effectively ‘the face’ of their New York bar.
Although some of the same investors are involved: “It’s a completely different operation,” says the Belfast man.
“We opened Dead Rabbit on $900,000. This is going to cost multiple millions of dollars.”
But he’s not too worried. In the past year, the Belfast man climbed Kilimanjaro, ran his first marathon and is on his way to completing a degree with Harvard.
It’s instilled another level of resilience on top of the toughness already developed in Ardoyne and New York.
“A few years ago I would have been petrified, I wouldn’t have been capable.
“Whereas now I see this as the biggest challenge of my life and it’s something I’m really ready for and excited about.”
An Evening with Sean Muldoon and Jillian Vose takes place at The Merchant Hotel, Belfast on Monday 29 January 2024 at 7pm. Tickets, priced £50 and include a welcome cocktail and three complimentary drinks, are available to purchase from Glistrr. To find out more, visit themerchanthotel.com/whats-on
