A taste of home
With more expats per square kilometre than other areas of the island, Paphos also has more food outlets to cater to them. We speak to four people who have moved to the island, bringing a little bit of home with them
David Haywood, scone baker
A perfectly baked scone has a consistency somewhere between the density of bread and the lightness of cake, and master baker David Haywood is the acknowledged expert in making these little beauties.
Born in Yorkshire, he started working in his local baker on Saturdays at the age of 14, then permanently at the age of 15 after leaving school. After his apprenticeship and at the tender age of 17 he was made manager, continuing to work as an all round baker until the age of 24, when he decided to branch out on his own.
“I spotted what they now call a gap in the market for proper, baked scones. In those days bakers rarely, if ever, had consistency in their recipes – they would just pour in a bit of this and a scoop of that hoping their experienced eye and instinct would make it all turn out okay. I was determined to develop a fool proof recipe for scones that not only tasted good and looked good but importantly were always that way,” he says.
After a lot of experimenting, David got the mix right and he began making scones from 2:30am until 2:30pm, working for 26 hours straight at the busiest times.
Realising his success, David then took the plunge. He sold his house and invested in a factory in Barnsley, opening his own fully equipped scone factory in 1987. “We were able to turn out 25,000 scones an hour, 20 hours a day, seven days a week to supply the likes of Sainsburys, Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and the Iceland stores”.
After a while though David realised he missed his roots, getting his hands dirty. “I just missed the hands on bit of the business because dealing with the factory was more business meetings than kneading dough, and there was also a lot of stress so, with my children grown we made the big decision to move permanently to Cyprus,” he says.
“My wife Anna and I always loved coming here and years before we bought a holiday home so we came over, researched the ideal spot for a family bakery and now we have the business up and running in Chlorakas and I am back being a proper baker, which is what I love doing”.
Although the products David makes are English, he has also attracted some Cypriots. “We now have quite a few locals who come in for sausage rolls, Cornish pasties and the like but we do only English type breads so we don’t compete in the bread stakes”.
And what of the scones? “Even after making over 15 million of them, I now get great pleasure coming into the shop at 4am every morning, switching on the radio and getting down to making the scone mix, along with the breads, rolls, cakes and savouries. I’m very much at home here, enjoying every minute of my life doing what I love best – baking”.
The Upper Crust Bakery
Opposite Papantonio supermarket Chlorokas, Tel: 26 273930
Michel Littiere, pastry chef
Like exquisite couture, the most impressive baking usually has good taste and simplicity at its heart. Parisian born Michel Littiere brings these two essential ingredients to work for him as a master pastry chef and over the years has honed his exceedingly tasty art, working within the kitchens of some of the best hotels in the world, before recently opening a patisserie in Paphos.
“I truly love what I do and although the hours are long – I work more than 100 hours a week with only a Sunday off – I never fail to get huge pleasure from my customers when they come back and tell me how much they enjoyed a particular cake or pastry. Having worked for so long in hotels hidden from guests this daily meeting with people makes me very happy as I get to hear what they think about my work”.
Michel took his time over the move to set up his own patisserie, planning and researching it for over two years and has nothing but praise for how easy it was to set up a business in Cyprus. “I did it all very smoothly and the local authorities were very good at helping me with things”.
After working around the world in top quality hotels, Yeroskipou must surely fade a bit in comparison. “When I came here first it was as head pastry chef at the Elysium Hotel so I was able to get to know the town and my wife Dian and our two children really settled in well. It’s a relatively safe place to bring up my family, the people are very supportive, and we made good friends, the children were happy, so we decided to settle here and have never had any regrets”.
Michel learnt the art of baking cakes from his mother at the age of 11. “When I was 13 I worked during the school holidays in a pastry shop in Paris so I knew from an early age what I wanted to do and that was to bake the best croissants, brioche, pastries and make lovely cakes for people to enjoy. That was it really and it is still my daily passion”.
Michel believes in using only pure ingredients – he places an order for 2,000 organic eggs every 10 days – offering customers a teetering pile of pure buttery croissants, shiny sheets of dark chocolate encasing hand made fillings rich enough to invite the sanction of law, along with a collection of classics such as meringues, macaroons and glorious creamy confections filled with aromatic pastry cream.
“I also make sure I source as many of the fresh ingredients like fruit, eggs etc locally so I will support our local producers as much as possible. I think that’s important for any foreigner coming here starting a new business to become part of the community, to work with local suppliers.”
Millefeuille Patisserie Francaise
Yeroskipou-Paphos airport road. Tel: 96 785546, 99 977648
Nick Chambers, sausage maker
Mention the word sausages and people smile. There is something instantly cheery about a sausage, they are surely the ultimate comfort food served with mashed potatoes, and they are also one of the last true artisan products wholly defined by the person who makes them.
Nick Chambers is such an artisan, having spent most of his working life making these little savouries. Until Nick migrated from London to live permanently in Cyprus few, if any, butchers here understood the iconic status a proper, seasoned sausage held in the hearts and minds of the British.
Nick is an east London lad and has worked as a butcher since 1994. His sausages were made in a factory at the rear of the shop and sales were good enough for him to then go out and purchase an Italian sausage business and help launch the East London Sausage Company. Over the next 14 years he made and sold around seven million sausages.
Last year he settled in Paphos with his family, which was a dream come true. “I always wanted to live and work here, we had been coming on holiday every year for nine years and always wanted to live here. When I saw so many expats also living here I knew there would be a demand for proper, hand-made, hand-tied sausages, with 85 per cent meat”.
Basic ingredients, including natural skins, high quality rusk and seasonings, are sourced in the UK, although the pork is bought local. “I used to work from 4am until 3pm making 1,300 sausages by hand six days a week, now it’s not so stressful but I still put in long hours to get my orders out for customers,” Nick says.
Nick sells freshly made traditional pork sausages along with a classic breakfast sausage, in addition to 11 other varieties including Cumberland, Italian, Chilli, Pork and Garlic, Leek, Lincolnshire, beef and gluten free sausages. His only problem is trying to turn locals on to the taste. “They are still a bit nervous about foreign sausages but I’m sure I’ll crack that market eventually”.
East London Sausage Company
Tel: 96 350538 or visit his stall at La Fontaine market
to test the full sausage range
Jill Payne, deli manager
Jill and David Payne sold their hotel in Torquay and retired to Paphos, where life was supposed to consist of lazy days in the sun interspersed with light reading and reflections on days gone by. Six months into their retirement and the light reading had changed to the close study of comparative shipping costs, licences, health and safety regulations, and contracts.
Retirement was somewhat premature, both husband and wife knew they weren’t quite ready to settle for weekly mahjong meetings or endless days on the golf course. Oliver’s Delicatessen was born and the family soon came out to join the business: daughter Helen gave up her job in England as a legal secretary, brother Stephen gave notice at Sainsbury’s supermarket, where he worked as a deli manager and the team was now in place to indulge resident Brits with tastes of home.
“We knew there was a demand for quality foodstuffs brought in from the UK, but we wanted to source the best hams, cold meats, cheeses, preserves and the like. We did try to have a local company act as our importers but we had to become our own importers”.
Setting up the business as the island joined the EU proved expensive as there was not wide knowledge on EU health and safety procedures and the family ended up incurring costs to carry out unnecessary procedures. “It’s okay now,” Jill says, “but it was a mighty expensive learning curve”.
The biggest problem the family now has to wrestle with is running a deli on an island far from the source market with products that only have a short shelf life”. This means stock is not always reliable. “We are utterly reliant on airfreight and sea cargo and these two modes of transport don’t always go to plan.
“But we do try hard to get the best quality then sell it on at a good price”.
Despite the problems, Jill says the family is happy here with no plans to go back to the UK. “This is our home, we love it here and despite the past problems business is good. We now have a greater bank of knowledge than we had when we started out, also the experience is there to overcome most of the hiccups.”
Oliver’s delicatessen
Tala, Tel: 99 270771
