04-02-2015
In January 2014 Poul Andrias Ziska became the chef of the most important restaurant in the Faroe Islands, KOKS in Torshavn, the capital of the archipelago and Ziska’s hometown. He will be one of the speakers during the Identità Estreme day, on Tuesday 10th February. On top of him, there will be Roberta Pezzella, Pasquale Torrente, Daniel Burns, Paolo Lopriore, Roberto Flore, Sergio Capaldo and Marco Stabile, Manuele Senis
Let’s start from the bottom. After a nice chat with Poul Andrias Ziska, young and brilliant chef at KOKS, in the Faroe Islands, where he was born and raised, I happened to ask him if he had aspired to leave, at some point in his life and career. If he didn’t feel that those islands, so beautiful and fascinating but also so far away from everything, with a climate sometimes so complicated and unwelcoming, were limiting him. Even though we were on the phone, the smile in his answer seemed very clear. I’m not the first to ask him this, for sure, and he probably still asks himself this question. Yet his answer, at least for now, remains clear, decisive and passionate: «I work in a unique, marvellous place that makes me happy. I love these Islands and working with these products, these raw materials, this culture. This is what I think I want and have to do, knowing that I still have many things to learn.» You were born and raised in the capital, Torshavn, where you now work. How did you decide to become a chef? «I had just finished school when this new restaurant opened in Torshavn. At the time the gastronomic scene in the Islands was almost non-existent and I found this idea very interesting: it was the first restaurant to have some gastronomic ambition and I asked to work there as an intern. Chef Leif Sørensen took me right away and I became passionate about this work just as quickly. Sørensen then closed this place to open another one, KOKS, of which, taking his place, I became the chef one-year ago.»
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Journalist, based in Milan. At 8 years old, he received a Springsteen record as a gift, and nothing was the same since. Music and food are his passions. Author and broadcaster at Radio Popolare since 1997, since 2014 he became part of the staff of Identità Golose Instagram: @NiccoloVecchia