Radisson SAS’s new chef talks about his life and work abroad
Dressed in an immaculate white smock, attire perfectly befitting the head chef of a chic French bistro, Markus Niderhauser took a break from the bustle of Cote Est’s kitchen and accompanied me into the main dining room.
With a relaxed smile and a faintly perceptible accent, Markus offered to get me a drink and suggested I take a seat at one of the tables near the bar. Having just observed the preparation of one of his newest dishes for the eatery, a tasty serving of mussels in a creamy tomato sauce, I was happy to end my lunch with a strong latte and an opportunity to chat with the chef.
From the Maldives to Moscow
As a native of the town of Koeniz in Bern, Switzerland, Markus has traveled a long way from home to come to Kyiv. But moving to unfamiliar countries is not new for him. Starting his sojourn abroad working at the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem, Israel, Markus has since worked all over the world, including locations in the Maldives, United Arab Emirates, Moscow, Poland, Oman, Jordan and Slovakia. Ukraine is the tenth country he has lived and worked in over the past 25 years.
Accustomed to globetrotting, Markus jokingly claims to be leading the “life of a gypsy,” and seems quite ready to call Kyiv his new, if temporary, home. “Every place in the world is home. I have no roots in that way. It’s sometimes hard, but mainly good,” he says. However, he did find certain locales nicer than others. Out of all the places he has lived in so far, the islands of the Maldives were his favorites, due to the locale’s calmness and the plentiful water activities to enjoy.
Even so, Markus grows a fondness for each place he travels. “Everywhere I am there is going to be a favorite place. You move to a country, start living there, and then you start to like it,” he says.
A recipe for travel
Through years of culinary experience, working abroad for numerous hotel and resort eateries, Markus is certainly an experienced chef. Concerning his own taste in food, Markus likes Mediterranean dishes and the spices and produce native to that area, best. When ask what advice he has to share with those of us less experienced with culinary arts, he advises to “inspire yourself by others’ cooking, but never copy.”
Markus’s affinity for cooking and traveling emerged at a young age. He knew he wanted to be a chef around age 13 or 14. “Because I have two left hands for building; I cannot build,” he jokes. “I wanted to travel and it was also the only profession where I knew I could travel as well.”
After secondary school, he spent three years studying cooking and worked at Parkhotel on Lake Thun in Switzerland. Soon after finishing his studies, he decided he wanted to try living in a new place. “I worked up in the mountains, for a ski season, and then I went to Israel. That was when I was about 19 or something,” he says.
But his first journey abroad was not so easy, as he explains that after Israel he decided to move back to Switzerland. He stayed there for about eight years before taking a position in the Maldives and later in the Middle East. Since then, he has been living and working abroad constantly, with only occasional jaunts home to see his mother and sister, three months being his longest break from life abroad. “I wouldn’t want to stay longer than that,” Markus insists, although he admits to occasionally wishing to go back for longer. “You go to Switzerland and say, ‘Oh, well, it could be quite nice,’ but then you move on with your life. It’s better like that.”
Getting out of the kitchen
In regards to spending free time in Kyiv, there is one activity Markus admits does not interest him. “No cooking,” he says half jokingly. Since it is Markus’s first time in Kyiv, and he has only been here for about a month now, he is still exploring the city. With a busy work schedule, he has only had time to see a few parts of the city, like Mikhaylivskiy cathedral and the surrounding environs. Unfortunately, his favorite leisure activity is rather hard to come by in a crowded urban area. “I do paragliding normally, but this has to rest for a while. I have to attend to this job first…maybe after a while I can find a place,” he says, adding that the Carpathians, similar to the landscape in Slovakia, are probably the best suited for this pursuit. But traveling will have to wait until he has gotten to know the city better, although when free time arises, he already knows where he wants to go first. “I really want to go south, to see the Black Sea,” he says.As to his future travels, Markus has no idea where his work will lead him next. “Radisson is a good company to work at and they are opening new hotels in incredible places. The next place, I don’t know, they will tell,” he adds. Whatever the case, it’s pretty clear that Markus doesn’t plan to stop traveling anytime in the near future.
