Although Don Coleman says he doesn't have a drop of Irish blood in his veins, for the past three years he's been preparing meals at The Plough & the Stars -- the Old City Irish eatery -- as if he had a brogue.

Part of a three-chef team working under the direction of Executive Chef Vince Fanari, Coleman says that his single daily challenge is to execute the menu that Chef Vince creates.

"He has a dream, he puts it down on paper and I try and make it come alive for him," says Coleman. "Chef Vince is a master and I get the chance to learn so much from him. No two days are alike. I feel like I'm doing well here."

Coleman says he loves to cook, so for the past 24 years he's made a good living while also having fun. He admits he had dreams of becoming a car salesman, but instead Coleman followed in his family's footsteps: His grandfather once owned a popular New Jersey nightclub and his older brother is the chef at a Camden hospital.

"I'm what's known as a sous chef," Coleman explains. "I run the day shift, making sure things get prepped and butchered, and making sure the pantry is stocked with everything we'll need for the menu. Of course, I also cook. But hopefully nobody knows when I've prepared a particular meal. Chef Vince sets the standard and all the food has to be consistent -- no matter who's cooking."

After graduating in 1979 from the now-defunct Chain Lane Culinary School, Coleman accepted an internship at Caesar's casino in Atlantic City. "I was cooking soups, stocks and stews for 6,000 people at a time," he says. "I was working with really big kettles that could hold 225 gallons of liquid. They were so big, you could actually swim in them."

After his internship, Coleman worked at all 24 restaurants under the Caesar's banner, as well as with Donald and Ivana Trump at Mrs. Trump's namesake restaurant. "I had to work every restaurant in the casino -- then I started getting calls on my own," he says. Through the years, his culinary repertoire expanded to include dishes and techniques from Asia, Italy, Germany and France, such as sauces and reductions, a specialty. But Coleman says he found that he was always cooking for thousands of people a day. He decided he wanted to scale back a bit. Five years ago, he moved to Philadelphia and began cheffing at the Convention Center. During that two-year stint, Coleman was responsible for preparing lunches, dinners and cocktail sets for hundreds of conventioneers, flower-show attendees or whomever else visited the enormous special events venue. But he wanted to scale back even further, so when he got the offer from The Plough, Coleman says he seized the moment.

"I had heard a lot of good things about Chef Vince," he says. "I really wanted to work with him. I was lucky to get this opportunity."

These days, Coleman works the lunch shift at The Plough five days a week. On a busy day, he prepares approximately 60 meals. His main station is saute; his specialty is pasta.

"A good day is when there are no problems," he says, smiling. "A bad day is when food comes back to the kitchen because it's too cold, or there's too much salt and pepper, or too much wine -- or sometimes, it just took too long to get to the customer and they're annoyed. But when there are no problems and I feed a lot of people, that's what I call a good day."

As for mastering Irish fare, Coleman says it's another style that he's added to his gamut of international cuisines.

"The Irish sure eat a lot of meat," he says, laughing. "Take for instance the traditional Irish breakfast. It's got two or three kinds of sausage, plus bacon, along with beans, mushrooms, roasted tomatoes and eggs. Lamb is also a big seller. Whether served with mashed potatoes or cous cous and raisins, folks love it. And, here, we always cook it to order. Of course, our shepherd's pie is definitely popular, too."

Sometimes he says he thinks of opening his own restaurant, with an emphasis on seafood, but that will depend on finding the right location and raising enough money to launch it. He says he also imagines pursuing other lines of work that are totally unrelated to cooking. But Coleman says every time he ventures off, he always comes back.

"Working as a chef, you can do some really artsy stuff," Coleman says. "You can mix and mold all the different fresh produce and then have it go out to the table and find that somebody loves it. There's nothing that compares to that. For me, it's a great job and I love it."