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About Ilias
After training in the award-winning kitchens of the world, under the mentorship of the leading French chef Michel Roux, he returned to Greece with a dream to “break” the classic molds of catering in the hotels of Athens.
Having studied at the Intercontinental Hotel School in Sydney, Australia, Ilias Kariotoglou had the great fortune in his first steps to work next to the “dean” of global cooking, Michel Roux, who became his ultimate mentor.
The acquaintance with him took place on a Celebrity Cruises cruise ship in America where he went for work, and was to seal him in the years that followed. He had previously worked with Jerome Legrand, who taught him self-confidence in the kitchen, ethics, the way of thinking and proper cooking from the heart and vowed to him that the day he sees this work as a living, it will also be the day he stops cooking.
“The way I grew up in kitchens is what we call old school. I hardened myself in London’s Michelin restaurants, working 18 hours a day in a highly competitive and tough environment, practicing the discipline of the phrase ‘Yes chef’.”
His career path includes the five-star Stoke Park Hotel in London, where he started as Chef de Partie , to take on Sous Chef at the age of 23, stages at the five iconic restaurants Gordon Ramsay, The Ivy, Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, Le Gavroche, Square, The Waterside Inn, while in 2012 and 2013 he took part in the Roux cooking competition Brothers (The Roux Scholarship) where he was named among the 18 finalists both years.
He returned to Greece in 2013, and took over Avenue Bistro under the guidance of Michel Roux. “It was a dream that I never thought in my life would come true,” he tells me with the spontaneity that distinguishes him. Working with him was a huge privilege, not only professionally, but also personally, since then he literally entered the Roux family: Michel, Albert, Alain and Michel junior.
In the last book of the leading Frenchman who changed the facts of the British culinary scene and whose books constitute the modern Bible of Gastronomy, Ilias’ reward for the work he offered to the publication as well as his trust that he won, was to include not only in the book but also on the menus of Michel Roux’s restaurants in Switzerland and Edinburgh, Ilias’s Greek salad, a “teased” Greek salad by Ilias Kariotoglou. He is, it should be noted, the first Greek to worked at Michel Roux’s three Michelin star Waterside Inn, and the only Greek to have a dish named after him in his book. The appreciation of Michel Roux in his person has also been reflected in Tatiana Blatnik’s book, where the famous chef had given two recipes, one of which is Greek and dedicated to Ilias!
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