Live from Turkey – Part 2

Today is the day: tonight the Ciel Bleu event starts in the Turkish Gloria Hotel & Resort in Belek. Yesterday I informed you about the company pride I noticed among my Turkish colleagues; today I discovered that they are also very respectful. When I arrived today it was clear that I’m calling the shots today, and everyone showed a lot of respect for our work and ideas. It was clear that they gathered information about me on the internet, they were well informed.

Of course I’m also trying to learn as much as possible from them, everyone has other ideas and experiences. What surprised me the most is the fact that there are no professional education institutes to become a chef in Turkey. In Turkey you can become a chef when you are trained by a chef in the operation. If you are lucky and you meet a talented chef you will have many career possibilities. Or you become chef when your family owns a restaurant. Unlike in Holland, were you can actually study for this profession. I also learned that Turkey has an impressive food culture, but they remain close to their national traditions. Import is not done and people are not really open to the developments in Europe and the world. But this attitude is slightly changing because the younger generation is travelling more and hereby getting introduced to other food cultures which they bring back to Turkey.

 Today we are finalizing the preparations for the event and we will taste the menu. Everyone is very motivated and a little bit nervous because during the try out they found out that there are many steps to follow in the preparations of our dishes and you have to be very precise. But in the end the first night went very smooth and all the guests were impressed. There were important guests like the owner of Gloria Hotels & Resorts and the Dutch Embassy of Ankara. After a perfect first night I went back to my cottage on my golf buddy with a satisfied feeling.

Culinary greetings,

Onno Kokmeijer