What’s an Irishman Doing in the North End?

Editor’s note: This was submitted to North End Patch by Ascher Kulich, a resident of Charlestown and senior at Buckingham Browne and Nichols School in Cambridge, who wrote this piece for an English project that required students to profile an interesting person in depth.

Revealing a hint of an Irish brogue, Raymond Gillespie explained eloquently a bit about the Italian delights he offers at Salumeria Italiana located in a corner of Richmond Street in the North End.

“Okay, man, we’re going to Liguria. We’re going to the Italian Riviera region. Liguria, the capital city of Genoa, with the good soccer team called Sampdoria. Genoa is where Christopher Columbus was born,” he recently said. “The odds are that he was sailing the ocean blue trading in this island area.

“[The oil] should taste buttery and velvety, olivey, almost creamy, then just a light spice in the back of the tongue,” Raymond continued.

Wearing chef’s whites embroidered in green and yellow lettering with the words “Salumeria Italiana,” Raymond, a "chef's consultant,” serves fine olive oil and cheese samples from the gourmet store.

Study of food begins in childhood

Both an educator and a performer, Raymond is constantly delving into the geographical roots of his food.  With quick and masterful movements, he pours a sample of black truffle oil for a customer, filling up his spoon to the brim.

The name “Salumeria” means deli, but the shop is far from a typical supermarket deli. In the store, the customers explore the small room, illuminated by the warm glow of cured meats and gourmet cheeses. The pleasant scents of freshly baked breads, buttery olive oils, and aged cheeses cycle abound along with various meats, olives and numerous specialty items.

Raymond has been serving customers for over three years at Salumeria Italiana.

His involvement with food started in childhood; his family had him making croissants since the age of six.

“Can you believe...As a kid, [living in Ireland], it was part of my responsibility to attend the garden, so that was my first introduction as to where food in fact came from,” Raymond said.

“In the springtime -- planting potatoes, onions, heads of lettuce, cabbages, radishes; it was all very, very simple and not very, very fancy.”

 Everything Raymond and his family had to eat was made at home.

“We never went out to dinner,” he said. “Here, it’s the other extreme; everyone’s going out to eat.”

Respect for other cultures

From an early age, Raymond embraced the opportunity to expose himself to different cultures, a byproduct of which became his love of food and culinary practices.

“As an active youth, I was very physical,” he said. “I was always hungry. As a teenager, I had an opportunity to travel. I was fortunate enough to spend time in the Middle East,” due to my father’s job with an American military contractor."

Raymond also spent time in Egypt, Cairo, Lebanon, Beirut, Syria and Damascus.

 “When you travel to those parts of the world, you know, very popular in those cultures are food markets. And that was a complete eye opener for me, to get out to a market and see stuff that I had never seen, hearing people talking and just the colors in the marketplace kind of drew me in.”

Raymond’s path toward becoming a “chef’s consultant” was unexpected.  In college, he “failed miserably” to the point where he dropped out and began serving in the catering department at the airline, Aer Lingus.

Despite achieving a sought-after culinary position, he “hated it” and eventually quit to “explore the cultural scene” in Dublin.

“Living in Dublin, I got into the whole idea of urban gardening,” Raymond said. “I was introduced to several different ideas that kind of stuck with me to this day, including Rastafarianism.

He started to develop his culinary principles: “I was trying to eat according to the season, I was trying to eat local from what grew in Ireland, and I was trying to make my own food.”

School, travel and back to the kitchen

After this awakening, Raymond returned to college in Ireland, studying hotel and restaurant management. In the summer of 1985, after three more years in Ireland, he moved to America and has been here ever since.

“So, at the end of two years, I found a job,” Raymond said. “And I found my way back into the kitchen.”  

Raymond said Salumeria Italiana is great.

 “It’s a grocery store for everybody -- not only people from Italy but from all over the greater Mediterranean Basin including North Africa, the Iberian Peninsula, the Middle East and Near East, as well as Northern Europe.”