On Friday the 20th of June, Barshank will cook for the second Refugee Food Festival at the restaurant “Ama Laxei”, in Athens city center. He is inviting us all to taste recipes from his home country.
His homeland is Syria. We met him last year since he was one of the five participants of the first Refugee Food Festival held in 2017 in Athens, Greece.
Barshank who quickly won over the Athenian population with his spicy Syrian dishes returns this year but in a different restaurant. The 26-year-old chef cooks all the time, no matter what country he is in. How did he learn to cook so well?
He discovered his love for cooking during his college years when he lived away from his home in Syria. His mother helped him of course. “I love cooking. I learned to cook well with my mother’s help who would give me instructions over the phone”.
In Iraq, where he lived for a few years, he worked as a chef at a 4-star hotel – they were reluctant to let him go!
Today, he lives with two compatriots of his in Athens and he is learning English and Greek. However, the first thing he does as soon as he wakes up is to think about the menu for the day. He cooks for everyone in the house and enjoys creating imaginative dishes.
*Barshank lives in a SolidarityNow independent apartment in the framework of ESTIA-the Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation program, supported by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and funded by European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO).