For the love of cooking

Viktor Angelov and Ivailo Petkov specialise in tasty food, not pretensions

Text: Magdalena Rahn
Photography: Svetoslav Stoyanov

Take two men with a taste for innovation, a commitment to fresh ingredients and top quality in product and presentation, a team of cooks without a pecking order and a setting suitable to a woodsy fairy-tale. Add to this an utter lack of pretentiousness and an overarching passion for tasty food, and you have the recipe for Chef's.
The restaurant, tucked in a nook 20km out of Sofia on the road to Borovets, opened in 2006. It doesn’t advertise, relying instead on word of mouth.
“If you want to know about such a place, you'll find it,” says Ivailo “Ivo” Petkov, owner and co-founder with Viktor Angelov. We're sitting at one of the wooden tables on the patio in front of the yellow-plastered restaurant. Ivo greets all passers-by convivially, inviting them to return for dinner or book for the weekend. (The restaurant is open on Wednesday to Friday evenings; on Saturday and Sunday it serves both lunch and dinner.)
The atmosphere is subdued, in contrast to its glamorous clientele. It was opened, Ivo says, because he and Viktor wanted a tasty place to eat in Bulgaria. Viktor graduated from the professional high school for food technology in Bankya, and Ivo from the Sofia equivalent. Both had stints cooking abroad. They met at the Sheraton Hotel in Tirana, which is where the idea for Chef's was conceived.
“[Bulgaria] has many nice places but none that have open kitchens and cooks who double as waiters,” Ivo says with a smile, noting the absence of formal waiting staff. “The difference is we talk to diners. We encourage communication by avoiding thick menus,” he says, indicating the menu board written in black erasable ink.
But no less attention is paid to the cooking. The choice depends on what’s in season, he says, and what's in the market each day. “We're flexible in that sense,” he says.
The kitchen staff – he, Viktor, Evgeni Genchev, Kiril, Milena, Petar and Veneta – shop at Metro every day before they start cooking. The hypermarket is their favourite, he reveals, because it has a good, high-quality selection of products as well as certificates of origin for each item.
As for buying local, Ivo says that it depends on quality. And while there are "some good producers of [red] meats, but not chicken" in Bulgaria, it transpires that most products still come from their beloved Metro.
“We taste everything first, before buying for the restaurant,” he says, while underlining the importance of meeting HACCP standards. “If it's good, we'll take it.” This goes for products like mozzarella, rucola and lamb as well as wines. Ivo describes Bulgarians’ wine preferences as swinging, pendulum-like, from Old World to New World and back again. Wines are displayed in an open bookcase in the dining area, with each bottle’s price written on butcher paper and hung around its neck by a loop of twine. More expensive vintages are stored in a temperature- and humidity-controlled wine cabinet. They choose wines when representatives from various cellars call, not through Ivo and Viktor visiting chateaux in Bulgaria or abroad. The ultimate benchmark is quality, not brand name or price. Ivo says that the restaurant’s appeal comes from “creating and maintaining the balance between good, well-prepared food and the attitude of the cooks towards guests”. He emphasises the word “guests”, as opposed to clients or customers because Chef's is a place where creating good food is an act of love, not a salary-fattening measure.
Both owners also insist on the absence of a kitchen hierarchy. Someone jokes that Evgeni is the nearest to second in-command, whereupon Evgeni, preparing the lamb for the photo shoot, offers a gentle reproach.
Evgeni, who also trained at the culinary high school in Sofia before working in Florida and England, says that cooking at Chef's is different from other restaurants, because guests can see preparation behind the bar, where there is a set of gas burners and a wood-burning oven.
“Here, in particular, it's like show-cooking. You get direct feedback and recognition,” he says. “In closed-off kitchens, you don't see people's reactions to the food.”
The work of a chef, typically viewed in Bulgaria as nothing better than a burger flipper at a fast-food chain, is acquiring kudos and more resources, Ivo says. A year ago, he notes, it was hard to find good cookbooks anywhere, let alone something translated into Bulgarian. Now, glossy tomes and classic treatises are commonplace in Sofia. In addition, new organisations have been created for professional cooks, like Euro-Toques or the Bulgarian Association of Professional Chefs.
With this progress understandably comes new ways of looking at food. In a country known for its “conservative” diners, Chef's is doing well with its innovative methods of preparation. Ivo likes to combine supposedly contrasting flavours, like marinated pineapple with sweet chilli. He says that people are "tearing down" their mental barriers and enjoying novel combinations.
Asked for his ideal menu, Ivo stresses the seasonality of his selection:
- First course: carpaccio of tuna with fresh ginger, served with a Riesling
- Salad: mixed lettuce with avocado and spicy calamari, served with a Sauvignon Blanc
- Palate-cleanser: sorbet of melon and cahula
- Main course (“but I don't know if I'd want it by then”): smoked salmon, and fresh asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, served with a Chardonnay
- Dessert: fruit, or chocolate bonbons (“but not truffles; those are trendy and served everywhere”) flavoured with mint, amaretto and black pepper. (Ivo loves Asian and Italian food, particularly antipasti, and black pepper.)
Don't expect Chef's success to trigger a chain; the idea is to do what they do well, and with dedication.
Oh, and as for the rumour that Chef's has no freezer, it will have to remain apocryphal – as Evgeni pointed out, where would they store their ice cream?


Gergyovden-style lamb – An interpretation of the traditional lamb dish served on Saint George's Day, May 6.

For each serving:
300g New Zealand lamb cutlets
100g fois gras
1 Tbs sour cream
fresh rosemary
risotto with cèpes, prepared ahead of time

Make a risotto from salt, pepper, butter, grated parmesan, cream, vegetable broth and a tad of truffle oil (it does not have to be anything expensive, Evgeni said), chopped onion and carrot, and chopped sautéed cèpes (though ordinary button mushrooms will suffice). If desired, add fresh basil and green onion at the end. Keep warm.

Season the cutlets, grill (in a pan or barbeque) until perfectly pink inside. Grill the fois gras in a medium-hot pan for exactly one minute on each side; season with salt (and black pepper if desired).

For each serving, form the risotto into a disk. Place a scallop of foie gras on top of the risotto, and arrange the lamb chops next to this. Decorate with a brown sauce made with the sour cream and chopped fresh rosemary. Serve with a salad of fresh lettuce dressed with oil and vinegar, chopped spring onions and sliced radishes.

Gergyovsko (St George-style) lamb is usually roasted whole, stuffed with lamb offals and rice. Traditionally, the roast lamb is taken to the church, where the priest then blesses it, first having broken a piece of bread and taken a piece of the lamb. The Gergyovden meal was usually eaten in a field behind the church, with all the villagers gathering to share.
St George the Victorious was born between 275 and 281; on April 23 303, he met death under Roman Emperor Diocletian for refusing to persecute Christians, as he, too, was a believer.  Lamb is eaten on May 6 (new calendar) to represent his martyrdom.