Everybody loves a plot twist.
When Niall Duffy, owner of Richmond’s Two and a Half Irishmen bakery, moved his family from Ireland to Virginia, he had a choice to make. With a degree in chemistry, Duffy’s career back in his home country was overseeing sensitive explosives that removed rock without reverberating shockwaves. Upon arriving in Virginia, a red tape delay of Duffy’s work papers left him temporarily sidelined in his new home. And so, he baked.
“I wasn’t intending to do this,” Duffy explains. “Our kids were all small, so I looked after them; baking was just something to do in the beginning.” Now, he’s a culinary talent, specializing in traditional Irish breads and scones as well as Virginia-rooted baked goods.
He originally learned baking from his grandmother. “When I first started, I got her to write down her recipe for her famous brown bread,” Duffy said. “I still have that handwritten piece of paper. I probably should get it framed at some point.”
His customers would agree. They gush that his treats are decadent and utterly delicious, which is high praise coming from a Richmond clientele, surrounded as they are by local bakeries known for being particularly scrumptious.
But Duffy is not one to chase a compliment.
“I think I got a little lucky,” he says when I ask him to comment on the fact that even the mixed bag of regularly grouchy Reddit commenters call his customer service “super nice” and say everything he makes is “amazing.” All in a day’s work for a guy who never set out to be a baker.
Duffy’s baking hobby gained traction when he began bringing free samples to local farmers’ markets, and they quickly became a crowd pleaser among the regulars. However, not everything was an immediate hit. “It’s a very general point, but Irish recipes have less sugar, because it was so expensive in Ireland,” Duffy says regarding his learning curve to pick up on the American palate. “Also, it’s cane sugar here, but back in Ireland, we use beet sugar.”
He began reworking his recipes, with his chemistry background acting as both a help and hindrance to the science of editing familiar family recipes from a different cultural lens.
“Things like having too many eggs, OK, if you add extra eggs, you think it’s going to rise more, but it’s not; it’s going to fall under its own weight,” Duffy says, pointing to the inherent difference in knowledge base between a classically trained baker and a young boy who trained at his grandmother’s elbow.
The emotional demands of shifting his mindset from explosives to baking to revamping recipes sound like stress at a 10, but Duffy’s distinct Irish lilt and kind, self-deprecating manner emits something of an anxiety-suppressing effect into the air around him. He’s talented enough to pull off the job at hand—that much is obvious. And his work ethic is practically palpable. He’s also a guy who draws you in, like he has a handle on a particular secret. It’s something along the lines of comfortable confidence that the task of bridging cultural differences is more adventure than angst and that people, in general, are quite inviting. Lovely even.
“In the beginning, I was afraid that with Irish recipes, maybe people wouldn’t take to them,” Duffy says. “But the people of Richmond have been so welcoming, so open to trying new things. You feel then that you’re doing something that’s worthwhile.”
In 2015, Duffy officially launched Two and a Half Irishmen (Duffy calls himself the resident “half,” while his boys are the title’s “two”), a micro bakery he and a small team have grown and continue to run from a commercial kitchen he built in his home.
“I started adding, say, a couple of local recipes, and then we added and added,” Duffy says. “Now we have about 180 in all.” Those recipes, as much as possible, use local ingredients like peaches, apples, and raspberries. “It makes such a difference to the flavor,” Duffy insists.
Local-leaning though his bakery may be, it still has an only-get-this-here energy, with distinctive offerings like Irish tea brack or treacle bread, which Duffy says, “Calls for quite a lot of Guinness.” His team currently sells their breads and scones online, at local grocery stores like Stella’s, Ellwood Thompson, and at local markets. One customer was thrilled to find Duffy’s pumpkin bread at Tom Leonard’s Market, given her family’s severe peanut allergies, which Duffy has accommodated by further wrestling his recipes into gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, nut-free and vegan options as needed.
“I was told a long time ago, ‘Don’t chase the money,’” Duffy says of his drive to innovate around customer needs. “Make every transaction a success and the money will follow.”
What’s likely to follow now is a distributor, with Duffy ready to expand his reach into new cities. It is a natural next step for a guy who gives us hope that a brush with bad luck can still plot twist into something sweet. Everybody deserves a slice of that.
Sliced traditional Guinness gingerbread, best enjoyed with a pint of the iconic Irish stout.
Hot Southern Honey Dubliner Irish Cheese Scone dough before baking.
Classic Carrot Cake (Dairy-Free)
11 ounces grated carrot (about 2–2½ cups)
2 eggs
7 ounces light brown sugar
3 ½ ounces) raisins
5 fluid ounces canola or vegetable oil
3 ounces walnuts or pecans (chopped)
6 ½ ounces self-rising flour
1 teaspoon baking soda (bread soda, for the Irish)
2 teaspoons cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon mixed spice or pumpkin spice
Pinch of salt
Orange or Lemon Cream Icing (Not Dairy-Free)
5 ounces cream cheese (remove from fridge immediately before)
1 ounce butter (a little soft)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 ounces confectioners’ sugar (sift to add)
Zest of 1 lemon or orange
Preheat oven to 300℉. Lightly grease a 9-inch-by-5-inch loaf pan.
First, beat the eggs in a large bowl, and then add the oil, brown sugar, all the carrot,
and raisins—and if you choose, the chopped nuts.
Mix well.
Sift in the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, spices, and salt.
Use a hand mixer at low speed to combine.
Add the mixture to your loaf pan and bake for about 65–75 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Let loaves cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack to let cool completely before serving.
Icing:
Chef’s note: If you decide to go for the non-dairy-free version, then adding this delicious cream cheese topping is the bee’s knees!
Combine the cream cheese and butter using a hand mixer.
Add the vanilla extract, confectioner’s sugar, and zest, and mix until very smooth and quite thick.
Use a palette knife and a bowl of very hot water to spread the icing out on the cake. Use the hot water on the knife if the icing becomes hard to spread evenly.
Enjoy … and don’t blame me if you eat it all and put on 20 pounds!
This article originally appeared in the April 2026 issue.
