Aleksey Menyailov

I’m 33. I’ve been working as a cook for 14 years. In Klarabara restaurant I’ve been working since 2003 with small breaks.

I became a cook thanks to my parents. When I went to school, my mother noticed that I liked cooking, and decided to put me on this way.

All children reveal interest to certain things. I liked to cook at home. For example, I fried potatoes by myself and decorated it, and my mother decided that I could be a cook.

I studied cooking in Odessa, in college no.26 (former no.1) in the Pushkinskaya Street. The first place of work is Rendezvous café in the Mayakovskogo Street at the corner with the Gogolia Street. I don’t know, if this café is still there.

I don’t have any food preferences. The way I prepare food for myself can appear strange to others. At home I like, for example, to mix mashed potatoes with buckwheat porridge, add meat gravy and whipped eggs. I like mixtures like this. But my favourite dishes are fried potatoes and roast chicken.

I have two children: a boy and a girl. My daughter is 6.5 and my son is 2.5 years old. I like to spend my free time with them.

As for authorial dishes, I think it’s a rather disputable notion. But I can say that I have such dishes: salmon roll in chicken fillet with almond sauce and catfish in veal fillet with spinach and berry sauce. This is what I’ve never seen anywhere else and cooked for our brunches and holidays.
I like Ukrainian cuisine the most.

I like to work in Klarabara, it’s interesting, and I like the personnel. I had an opportunity to work as a cook both ashore and at sea.

After Rendezvous café I worked at a passenger and cargo ship en route Istanbul-Odessa for more than a year. There were interesting cases at sea related to bad weather and rocking. It was interesting to cook during storm and then watch how people tried to eat it.

But in the end I understood that the sea was not for me, that I prefer to stay ashore. Every day is full of joy and there are more opportunities for self-improvement and self-fulfilment ashore, since one is rather limited at sea.

As for cooking, it is very important in the beginning, perhaps it’s true for any other profession, to have a good teacher, who can bring you up, can make a cook of you, to make a person that will be either interested or not.

At the ship I had two teachers. One of them promoted love to the work. He was very strict, sometimes he could even punish me. So I can say that this person was bringing me up. The second teacher gave me more freedom, he was more easy-going and not so strict, that’s why I had to make decisions by myself.

I’ve chosen the dish Sandwich of «Privoz» porter, because it is virtually Odessa «national dish». Everybody likes kilka in Odessa. This dish is also easy to cook, but it is very tasty. The dish represents curds with basil, with adding kilka fillet and spring onion. It is served with Mikado tomatoes and Crimea onion and olive oil.