Sifnos Nikos Tselementes

The renowned Greek chef Nikolaos (Nikos) Tselementes was born in 1878 in the small village of Exambela, on the island of Sifnos, where he would graduate from high school. He went on to pursue a career as a notary clerk, before picking up cooking while working at his father’s and uncle’s restaurant. Nikos then moved to Vienna, where he would hone his culinary skills and eventually develop a unique cooking style characterized by a blend of traditional Greek and European flavors.

Upon his return to Greece, Nikos worked for various embassies. In 1910, he published a comprehensive, 500-page cookery book called Odigos Mageirikis (Cooking Guide). The book featured traditional recipes, along with a plethora of hybrid dishes, combining the best of Greek cuisine with Western European cuisine. In addition to recipes, Nikos wrote nutritional advice, cooking news, and opinion pieces. The book sold about 100,000 copies by the time of his passing in 1958 and is to this day the definitive cooking bible of every Greek home cook.

A lot of Nikos’ dishes had a distinctly French touch to them, especially the sauces and their methods of preparation. He preferred butter to olive oil and paid special attention to the presentation, which is quite contradictory to the simple nature of Greek cooking. Among his many contributions, he is credited with transforming the traditional Greek dish of moussaka by adding a unique bechamel sauce topping.

In 1919, Nikos became manager of Hermes Hotel in Athens, before moving to the United States of America the following year. There, he worked for many world-renowned restaurants, and in 1930 he published a second cookbook, named Odigos Mageirikis kai Zacharoplastikis (Cooking and Patisserie Guide). He returned to Greece in 1932 and established a small cooking and confectionery school. In 1950, he published his only book in English, the Greek Cookery.

Many chefs tried to imitate his techniques in an attempt to attract an international audience. For some, Nikos is almost a god-like figure, the ultimate authority as far as Greek food is concerned and the epitome of all that tastes good. Others, however, hold him responsible for diluting and corrupting traditional Greek cooking. Some even accuse him of creating a class-based system, in which his French-influenced creations were for the more affluent classes and simple Greek cooking was considered lower class.
Either way, few do not recognize how Nikos Tselementes’ name has become synonymous with Greek food, with his influence altering the Greek culinary world forever.