To Those I Owe So Much

There are people behind the way I cook, the way I work and the way I look at a kitchen. I still hear some of them when I am making a decision. Sometimes I catch myself doing something exactly as they did, even after all these years.

I owe much of who I am to the people I have met and learned from. Some were my teachers or my bosses. Others worked beside me, or were part of teams I led. Customers and suppliers have taught me plenty too, as have people at home, in markets and in workshops. You never know who will show you something that stays with you.

There are far more people than I could name here. These are some of them, and some of the stories I wanted to tell. Because putting my own name on everything without mentioning theirs would leave a large part of the story untold.

The Chefs of Les Roches

Brendan Cronin, Ruddy Bider and Dominique Stoeckli

At Les Roches, Brendan Cronin and Ruddy Bider taught me how much there was to learn about being a chef. There were the techniques, of course, but also discipline, organisation and managing your time. You could love cooking as much as you liked; you still had to be ready when the food was needed.

They helped me understand the history behind what we were doing and encouraged me to look further. Where did an ingredient come from? What could we do with it? Why did one method work better than another? That curiosity became a habit, and it has served me well.

I remember seeing purple cauliflower for the first time and learning that it came from Cyprus. There I was, away studying, discovering something from my own country that I had never seen before. It makes you wonder how much else you have been walking past without noticing.

They taught me to respect the ingredients and work with their natural qualities. Nature gives us so much to begin with. A chef needs to understand what is in front of him before deciding what to do to it.

Dominique Stoeckli, our pastry chef, also belongs among the chefs I want to thank. Alongside Brendan and Ruddy, he was part of those years when my enthusiasm for cooking began to acquire the discipline and understanding it needed.

I carried those lessons into every kitchen that followed. I still do.

José Bravo García

Spanish lessons, with the stove on

I met José Bravo García at Roessi in Rapperswil, in Switzerland. I was twenty, a stagiaire, and José spoke only Spanish. So I learned Spanish.

The lessons came through the cooking. Paella, chorizo, pimentón de la Vera, ñoras, rape, cigalas, secreto ibérico. He introduced me to his grandmother’s stews and to Spanish wine. With José, an ingredient usually came with much more than its name.

Then came the music: Camarón de la Isla, Paco de Lucía, Rocío, Serrat and Mediterráneo. Through that kitchen I found a language, a way of cooking and a culture that became a large part of my life. I eventually read El Quixote five times. José had started something.

He was a chef you watched closely. He stood where the heat was, with the pans, the grills and the fire, and could cook from morning until night without losing control of the service. When he moved, the rest of us moved. If he looked at the pass, we knew to look too.

He did not need much German to command that kitchen. And when he shouted, we certainly did not need a translation.

Mr Loukas

Then someone makes you a plate of afelia

By the time I met Mr Loukas at Troodos Hotel, after returning from Saudi Arabia, I had been cooking professionally for many years. I had worked abroad, run kitchens and accumulated enough experience to feel that I knew a few things.

Then I tasted his afelia and his taramosalata.

“I know nothing,” I thought.

Mr Loukas is from Limassol, a calm, easy-going man. I say he does not cook; he makes magic. You can know a dish, have cooked it many times and feel perfectly happy with your own version. Then you taste his, and suddenly you are paying attention all over again.

I am grateful to him for that. After so many years in the profession, it is a pleasure to meet someone who makes you want to stand beside him and learn. Especially when he does it with something you thought you already understood.

José Ramón Tapia and His Brothers

The fourth Negrito

At Tramonti, an Italian restaurant in Barcelona, I worked with three brothers from Santo Domingo. They called each other Negrito. When they found out that my surname, Mavros, means black in Greek, they took me in as the fourth.

José Ramón Tapia was the best garde-manger chef I ever had. His section had fourteen salads and cold starters, and they came out perfect. He made pâtés from scratch, mozzarella every week and focaccia every night. Through all that work, he was still smiling and hugging people.

I took him with me to three jobs. At a busy pizzeria, I made him head chef. He told me that the trust I had placed in him made him want to do his best. Hearing that from him meant a great deal to me. I had trusted his ability, and he had felt it.

Before he proposed to Victoria, José Ramón called and invited me to dinner. He wanted me to meet her.

After he proposed, he told me, “She is crazy, papa, she said yes.”

That is how I remember him: an excellent chef, a big smile, a hug, and a comment like that when you least expected it.

My Mother, Eleni

The cooking I grew up with

Much of what I know about Greek and Cypriot cooking began with my mother, Eleni. Long before I went to Les Roches or worked abroad, her food was already forming my taste.

I think of the wood oven, the stuffed vine leaves and onions, the halva, and her selinato with that smooth avgolemono. These are dishes I know through her. When I cook them, I have something very particular in mind, because I remember how hers tasted.

Studying and working in other countries gave me more techniques and more ways to understand food. My mother’s cooking gave me the place I started from. It is still there in the background, even when I am cooking something completely different.

There is a lot of my mother in my kitchen. She deserves to have her name on this page.

My Father

Yes, we are going all that way for fish

My father taught me to buy food. He took me to the markets at four in the morning, and I learned by going with him, watching what he chose and listening to the questions he asked.

He would look for the first tomatoes of the season in April. He would travel from Pafos to Paralimni for particular fish. That is a long way to go, but he knew what he wanted.

At the butcher’s, he could look at the hanging carcasses and point out the youngest animal. The butcher would ask him how he knew. I was watching all this, taking it in.

He taught me that the work begins with choosing what you bring into the kitchen. Season, freshness and quality mattered to him, and he was willing to make the journey to find them. Those habits stayed with me. Whenever I spend longer than necessary looking at a tomato or asking about a fish, there is probably a little of my father involved.

My Godfather

And who taught you to fix that?

My godfather took me into factories and workshops. Through him I became familiar with carpentry, machinery, kitchens, laundries, tools and repairs. I learned to use drills and saws, to look at how things were put together and to work out why something had stopped doing what it was supposed to do.

That has proved surprisingly useful in a chef’s career.

When I walk into a kitchen now, I look at the equipment as well as the food. I can often understand a problem, identify what needs attention and help an owner avoid spending money in the wrong place. Some of that knowledge came from years of kitchen work. A great deal came from my godfather.

As I have said before, this is not the experience of a cook. It is the experience of a high-level handyman. I owe him for that part of my education—and quite a few kitchen owners have benefited from it too.

A Debt I Am Happy to Carry

I have spent years learning from these people, sometimes without realising at the time how much I was taking in. I can recognise them now in things I do every day: how I choose ingredients, organise a kitchen, cook a familiar dish, trust somebody with responsibility or look at a piece of equipment that needs fixing.

Their names belong alongside my story.

I owe them so much. And I am happy to carry that debt.