Our Story


A small child should play games and dream to get ready for life. Yet, much sooner than we expect does life sometimes put the heavy meaning of the word “RESPONSIBILTY” on our shoulders. As a grown-up, instead of telling childhood stories involving toys, saying that you have always worked makes you feel deprived. However, what matters is the happiness in moments. Sometimes, it is a brief moment which shapes the future and builds a story that adds color to other lives.

So does the journey of taste that leads him to mastery start for Our Chef. When he reminisces about his childhood, in Kolay village of Bafra in Samsun, the pearl of the Black Sea region of Turkey, he, with a smile on his face, remembers the fields he worked as a day laborer, the days he collected snails and even the winter wood he carried on his back. The real recipe of happiness is hidden in the menemen his father cooked. The unique recipe of the moments that left their marks from past to present in which he even found his purpose in life.

Kolay village was a great place with its nature and people. Located on the banks of the Kızılırmak River, straight out of a fairy tale.


Our chef and his family used to live in a one-story house with a small garden in this fairy tale land. In the Black Sea region, every year tobacco harvesting starts in March and ends in October. Tobacco farming was a hard and a backbreaking job. Planting, digging, picking, tiering and drying were all tough processes. Although you pricked your fingers tens of times, gathering and tiering them were the most enjoyable of all.

While he was tiering tobacco with his mother and siblings, his father used to grab his wicker basket and pick up the ripest tomatoes, freshest onions and long green peppers from their own garden. Undoubtedly, peppers had to be hot. They were the crown jewel of menemen. Then, he used to wash all the vegetables one by one with care, and lined them up onto the kitchen counter along with spices. Slowly and meticulously would he chop them all to make them equal in length and size.

Accompanied by the light music they listened to on the radio, the food his father cooked with love was engraved on the future master chef’s mind each and every time. He would put a tray on the cookstove, and home-made butter in it, to start with. When the appetizing smell of the butter pervaded the room, onions would come next. “They turned yellow. Now it’s the right time for peppers” he would say, and add the peppers gently. When he added the ripe garden tomatoes, first, a faint sizzling sound would be heard. Then, a serenity would fall over the room where they tiered tobacco leaves.

After adding the spices, he would crack the eggs he took from the chicken coop into the pan, and, slowly, stirred them with a wooden spoon. The chef, while watching his father, thought how cooking requires mastery, care and love. Once in a while, Our Chef remembered the tobacco in his hands flinching in pain when he pricked his hand on its thorns.

Here are the final! A full feast.

His father’s voice would herald the awaited moment. “Come on kids, dinner is ready. First, wash your hands well. Rub your hands on a stone to remove the tobacco tar on your hands so that the taste of the meal is not clouded.” And the final! A complete feast!

Towards the end of the meal when there is little left on the tray, three siblings had a sweet fight over it. All they wanted was to grab more of it. These episodes of food which made the chef’s childhood memories unforgettable had become a bridge to his future without him realizing it.

The diligence his father showed had been carved on Our Chef’s mind as the recipe of creating a perfect flavor.

Discipline, ingredients chosen with great care, village butter, low heat and love.

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