The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A taste of simple, yet sophisticated Greek
Atlanta chef Pano Karatassos shares recipes from Kyma in ‘Modern Greek Cooking.’
In his new cookbook, “Modern Greek Cooking: 100 Recipes for Meze, Entrees, and Desserts” (Rizzoli, $50), Atlanta chef Pano Karatassos presents the dishes he honed at Kyma, his critically acclaimed and much beloved Greek seafood restaurant.
Drawing from his training at the Culinary Institute of America and experiences working in the kitchens of three of the world’s greatest chefs — Eric Ripert, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Thomas Keller — Karatassos reaches back to his Greek roots and his family’s recipes to create food that is at once simple and sophisticated. In other words, modern Greek cooking.
“I learned three different styles from each of those three different chefs, and three different ways of running a kitchen and a business,” Karatassos said during a recent conversation. “I guess I never really made a bad choice when it came to working with great chefs.
“Eric whipped me into shape, as far as what New York fine dining was all about. Then I explored my mind a bit with Jean-Georges and Wylie Dufresne. And I headed over to French Laundry to put it all into place. It was just a perfect scenario for me.”
But as the son of Buckhead Life Restaurant Group founder and CEO Ignatius Pano Karatassos, the younger Karatassos finally heeded his father’s call to return to Atlanta, and he soon opened the restaurant that would become Kyma.
“I got a phone call from my dad, like I wrote in the book,” Karatassos said. “And it was basically, ‘When are you going to be done?’ I always wanted to hear
those words. I never wanted to be the chef who my father had to give a job to because I was the son.
“I thought it was extremely important to learn from the best, so that when I came back to Atlanta one day, my father would want to hire me because of my talent. Did I overdo it? No. But looking back now, as a young 20-year-old, I definitely went for it.”
At Kyma, Karatassos asked himself, “How can I take all my French training and make a Greek restaurant one of the best in the country.” And he sought to take the example of what Keller did at the French Laundry and it apply to the food of his family.
“Coming home to Atlanta, I really didn’t think that Kyma was going to be a restaurant that I would fall deeply in love with. I always envisioned that I’d open this restaurant, and set it up so I could hand it to another chef without a blink of an eye. Then I’d wind up being the chef at Pano’s and Paul’s and doing all this French food with all the techniques I’d learned.
“But I’m still here today. And I fell in love with that whole idea of bringing my family’s recipes to life in a restaurant. It started with the teachings my grandmother gave me. And it was about finding out how I was going to do that with modern cooking techniques. I was able to take all my experiences with my grandmother, and my aunts in Athens, and create food at Kyma that became classics for our guests.”