What is everyday life like in the kitchen of a fine dining restaurant? We visited the much talked about Delta Restaurant, the absolute gourmet fine dining restaurant in Athens, and talked to the two chefs, Thanos Fesco and Giorgos Papazacharias. We went backstage and experienced first-hand a high-end kitchen in full function, while we had the chance to takes pics of the full evolution of the dishes that are actually sculpted in a very artistic manner.
You don’t have to be a dedicated follower of gastronomy, to have heard about the special project of Delta Restaurant, presently at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre. We have all heard something about this ambitious project of Dipnosofistirion, SNF and SNFCC, one that brings
together gastronomy, sustainability and culture. The restaurant, where you need €200 per person to dine on food and wine, has gone viral long before it opened its doors to welcome an audience thirsty for extroversion and magic after the sterile pandemic era. We've all heard about it: from friends who have visited and described it with enchantment, from tasting reviews in print and online media, from social media posts.
We saw the palatial dining room of this haute cuisine restaurant, and its very unique dishes decorated with edible sculpting. We had heard about the special philosophy of this ambitious space: an aerial garden floats above the
tables, a breathtaking futuristic golden bar all lighted up makes you feel like you've come to dine in a museum. We had read a lot about its quirky Mediterranean cuisine, that all Greek ingredients are produced on a private organic farm in Markopoulo, that Thanos Feskos and Giorgos Papazacharias,
having worked in award winning restaurants in Scandinavia, carry along the Scandinavian culture, but what we hadn’t seen was how this famous haute cuisine is shaped behind closed doors.
The iefimerida. gr walked in the kitchen of Delta Restaurant, where we recorded the production process of its much talked about dishes, had a friendly chat with the two Greek chefs running the project, more or less about every single aspect of it, namely the daily routine in such a demanding
conceptual restaurant, the secret place where the heart of high gastronomy actually lies, the rocking aspect of the approach, namely that food nowadays quite functions like rock music used to do, shaking the ground. Thanks Feskos and Giorgos Papazacharias pointed to the importance of the part played by the customers themselves, actually acting out the main part.
Going backstage
"We rehearsed everything long before the restaurant opened. We started performing with the guys last January on how to serve, how to approach people, how to present the dishes. Every night is a real performance," says chef Thanos Feskos, until recently Assistant Head Chef at the three Michelin award-winning Geranium restaurant in Denmark.
The 30 people who work at Delta Restaurant, 19 of them in the kitchen and 11 in the lounge, bar and reception, as well as the people who dine here every night, experience a special integrated gastronomic experience, as if they were participating in a bizarre opera where taste and art have the first word. "We directed this show altogether and we altogether star" said George Papazacharias, the other head chef who leads the R&D (research and development) team, having served at the three-star Maaemo restaurant in Oslo and the famous Under in Norway.
When we visited Delta Restaurant, the restaurant doors were still closed, but every single member of the staff was there and the kitchen was fully functioning. We walked in through the staff entrance, used the large inox catering elevator, outside of which there are countless crates used to supply the restaurant with organic produce from Delta's farm in Markopoulo. It's impressive how everything, even the catering areas, glows. Exiting the elevator, we walk into the kitchen.
Two huge cooking areas with large inox countertops and corian. Walls and floors are lined with soft blue tiles, giving out the vibrancy of a swimming pool area. Trays of dough or vegetables that someone sculpted with a scalpel, a mere work of art. A space as sterile as an operating theatre and as lively as the atelier of an art school. Only there are no brushes here, there are ceramic utensils of many kinds, knives, trays, bags of vegetables, pots, spoons,
scales.
Ribbons with dried herbs, dried mushrooms and vegetables hang all around, adding only as much colour to the place, as to remind one this is Greece_actually the Aegean Sea is only right there, the restaurant sea view of the Faliro Delta is mesmerising.
Someone is pouring tomato juice into a huge pot, some other is burning pepper noses with a blowtorch, only God knows what they will be transformed to. A shrimp with a head made of carrot, some sea urchins made of potato, all arty to the bone, paying huge respect to the notion of eating
beautiful.
After a tour of the kitchen, the two chefs, whom we have yet to meet, welcome us in the empty
Delta lounge. The view is awesome. The light as it filters through the huge crystal openings creates a highly interesting contrast with the huge steel beams that mark the building, designed by the internationally renowned architect Renzo Piano for the National Opera House.
On the floor stone is beautifully married to wood, it is velvet on the seats, the surfaces on the futuristic bar and the sculptures that float in a blackened small lake in the background is all gold.
The most striking feature is the huge silver caskets suspended above the rotundas, chained from the ceiling. Whole trees, hanging above the hall, designed internally by Kois Associated Architects, make up a small forest, the hanging gardens of Babylon, strongly rivaling the breathtaking sea view.
