Chefs in Europe

My name is Tomasz Czyżycki, I’m 33 years old. I was born in Krakow, Poland. My adventure with real cooking started 14 years ago. After finishing gastronomic school I started working in one of the top restaurants in southern Poland which was serving French cuisine. After 3 years of experience I was promoted for the First Deputy Chef. Searching for knowledge and new challenges I moved to the restaurant in the very heart of Krakow, where I had an opportunity to learn European and genuine Polish cuisine.

At school wanted to be an actress, a stuardess, a pilot… I ended up as the student of Kiev’s Hotel management College in 1991, Public Catering Department. I got my first job as waitress in 1993 in Casino Club First (Intourist Hotel – these days – President Hotel Kievskiy). From that time I understood for myself – I like serving people. To serve people! Not to be their servant! Any way I do prefer the verb – “to take care of guest”. It was bar there, I had started to help bartenders, and fell in love with it. I had great teacher mentors like John Siao, Peter Norton, Steve Kelly who inspired me to become a bartender at first place.

Since childhood, I was fond of kitchen and food. My father worked as a chef for a long time, and therefore he always told me not to work in this profession, but I never listened to my parents. I remember how I disturbed my father in the kitchen. He showed how to cook, but he didn’t explain anything. It’s one thing to be a good cook, and quite another – to be a teacher. It is the opposite situation with my mother, she can cook only very simple dishes by grandmother’s recipes, but she is good in teaching. My father didn’t give me an opportunity to practice, and my mother was cooking with me patiently. I remember that they praised my juicy and perfect omelet, I cooked it as my father, but I received from him only a ready dish without the recipe of its correct preparation. Sometimes, in the absence of the father, they allowed me to prepare omelets, and I was very happy. I still believe that if you want to understand how delicious are the hands zof the chef you should to taste his omelet.

’ve been cooking since I was about 8, I remember I was already in the second grade and my parents began to go on tour with the theatre very often, and I stayed at home with friends of my mum, babysitters and relatives. But my main friends were neighbours in a communal flat, in the very old area of Kiev — Podol. I enjoyed meeting them in the shared kitchen. There I realized that domestic work and food could cheer me up. I’m 35 now, and I enjoy washing my floor, doing hand washing and spreading condensed milk and raspberry jam on waffle cakes. When I was in drama school in the UK, I couldn’t afford lunches in a canteen and I cooked pasta with herbs, thai rice and soup. During lunchtime I took out my lunch box and ate what I cooked — it was funny, but everyone thought I was posh, cool and had very picky eating habits. My path to the professional kitchen led through the kitchen sink.

I’m Italian, I was born and raised in Castelvetrano, Sicily. Today I am 46 years old and 30 years I worked as a cook. For six years I work in the restaurant Pizza dal Capo. I went to the kitchen when I was 8 years old, I helped my mother and my aunt prepare banquets for our relatives whom I have a lot. In 14 years, for the reason not to ask for money from my parents, I got a job in a restaurant as a junior assistant. I peeled potatoes and washed dishes. After high school I studied at the Marine College and received the master. But the kitchen has always attracted me.

I learned to cook when I married. Prior to that it was not necessary, my mom was cooking. The village is easy. Each has his own business. When I lived with my parents, there was no need to cook. Then, with the appearance of my children, I learned. I have gone through several regimes. And through the hope when everyone believed in communism, and through dispossession of people who want to work and worked. Through the Romanian government, which protected the Bessarabian people from the Nazis, not allowing them to scoff at the simply people, and through the terrible postwar famine. Through the Renaissance and the sunset of a great country, and the time of formation of a new one.

I was born in Grenoble, France. This is the region of Rhône-Alpes. I don’t remember how old I am. Rather I remember, but it doesn’t matter in my age. In 14 years I understood that I want something to open, explore, and create in a gastronomic sense. I felt a passion for my future work. In my development an important role played the observance of the right ingredients, the choice of a good product. I will never waste my time on trifles. After all, if you do something, you have to make it to the end.

I work twenty years in the restaurant industry and three years as a chef. In my restaurants I often cook for myself. I love it and I love doing it. I travel a lot, I was almost in the whole world, from where I take recipes and culinary mood. When I am not very busy with my work I go for travel immediately. I like very much to visit various flea markets, shops, open-air bazaars and shops with old junk. Favorite things I buy and bring to Moscow.

I am 59 years old. I was born in 10 km from that place where now there is my restaurant, in Aix-les-Bains. It is the city of thermal sources in the region Savoie, near the Lac du Bourget.The best fish in the world floats in this lake. I prepare the dishes from the products that grow in my district. I am a third generation of chefs in our family. In this hereditary profession, there are two ways: either you plunge into it from childhood, or you realize that this is a crazy profession, because ninety percent of your life you spend at work. And I chose to stay in this profession that requires a huge return.

I’m 30. I’ve been working in a restaurant business for 11 years, 7 of which as a chef. Now I work at SEREBRO (Silver) Restaurant & Music Bar. This place is dear to me, because here I can bring into life my most outstanding culinary fantasies, and our guests like it. The first time I got to the kitchen, when my father worked at one of the metropolitan restaurants. He wanted to occupy me with something and offered to work at one of the simplest processes. I was responsible for peeling and cutting vegetables. That’s how it all started… With time, I started taking interest in products, technology of cooking and combination of taste. For 4 years I worked in «my» first restaurant, I was involved in all the processes and I made my way from a person dealing with vegetables to sous chef. It was a really huge experience…