“José Andrés always told us food needs to have a story,” Chef Efe Onoglu philosophized as we sat down to a tasting menu created by the biomedical engineer–turned–international cooking mastermind, who seasons each meal with the spice of genuine stories. This Aegean sofra (“a table set for a meal” in Turkish) is held in his Eastside kitchen each Tuesday evening, and is just one of the many chef’s hats that Onoglu wears.
Before working as Chef de Cuisine at José Andrés’s Zaytinya in Washington, D.C., Onoglu was honing his cooking skills at home in Turkey, learning from his grandfather, a farmer; and his mother, an avid home cook. Those memories continue to inspire the dishes he makes today.
“Mediterranean families spend more time in the kitchen than the living room,” Onoglu said of how his ambitions began. His hunger to explore and to cook led him to culinary school; to Cape Town, South Africa; and back to Turkey, where he opened two restaurants. That same exploratory spirit landed him a job at the Four Seasons in Washington, D.C., where Andrés recruited him for Zaytinya. He expanded to working at Boston’s Nahita, and then finally to California, where he cooked at Bavel in Los Angeles.