Michael Zavros

The award-winning artist on his Greek-Cypriot heritage, Catalan cooking and food as art.

Artist Michael Zavros.

Was food a big part of your life growing up?

It sure was. Mum and Dad were not super chefs but they prepared healthy food fairly economically, and in large quantities for five hungry kids. Although, the first time I tasted really delicious food was at a family gathering – we’d get together with my dad’s family in Melbourne, or sometimes in Queensland, and just eat great Greek dishes. Greek food was my entrée into excellent cuisine.

Your father is Greek-Cypriot. When did he move to Australia?

He came here when he was five years old. He came out speaking Greek and very much had that migrant experience. It wasn’t until 2010 that my wife and I, and our two kids, went back to Cyprus with my dad and his wife. We stayed in an incredible stone house that my grandparents once owned. I realised that they had been very successful in business and had this incredibly beautiful property and they gave it all away because Cyprus was going through a civil war and there was a lot of turmoil there. They just wanted a better life for their children. So they headed down under. It was very much about opportunity, the way it is for a lot of immigrants.

What were some of the most memorable dishes you ate in Cyprus?

People would just bring us food and produce from their neighbouring farms. I remember a woman turning up with a goat’s milk haloumi and it was dripping wet between these sheets of mint leaves. That’s the kind of thing that they’re producing all the time and the flavours are so extraordinary. There was also a dish called trahana, which is basically dried yoghurt, and I’d never seen anything like it before. You eat it like soup. The night I had it, we were getting together with some of Dad’s cousins, and one of the old men had hit a rabbit on his way to dinner. So he stopped, picked it up and brought it, then skinned it and barbecued it with some egg.

You’ve had residencies in some iconic food cities around the world, including Barcelona. Did you eat out much while you were there?

Barcelona was actually the last place I remember cooking a lot. The residency there was in a great part of town and we were really close to excellent, world-famous food markets. It had a huge kitchen, too, along with a great Catalan cookbook – I went through it cover-to-cover and tried to cook everything in it. With these dishes, there was often just a little bit of dark chocolate added at the end… fascinating. So I got into these very rich casserole dishes where, right at the end, you’d throw in some dark chocolate.

Do you believe cooking and art have

anything in common? I do, actually. I think with art, so often, you’re following a recipe. Good art has similar ingredients. It needs to have a concept, a certain aesthetic and medium. And it all needs to come together in a way where all those things complement each other, very much like preparing a dish. One thing can’t overpower the other.