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Chef d'oeuvres
Letha Jose

We have tucked into the spicy calamari at Samba and beef carpaccio at Tuscany and savoured every bit of it. At Samba we would have even got a glimpse of a handsome chef conjuring up some delicacy in an open kitchen. But then, fine dining is an experience we take for granted in a star restaurant. In a bid to put a face behind the food we eat, Business Today meets two of the finest chefs in Muscat, both less than a year old here, yet have managed to leave an impression with their creations. Meet Adam Roy (above) of Samba and Alessandro Sandrolini (facing page) of Tuscany.

The young Italian at Tuscany and the young American at Samba have not met. But if they do, they are sure to hit it off. Both come from small towns yet moved beyond boundaries, never wanted to be chef, don't think much of celebrity chefs and love dining out at small wayside eateries. Surprisingly for two chefs with fine culinary capabilities, both say being a chef was not the stuff their dreams were made of. Adam would have loved to be a rock 'n' roll star – in fact he says he was part of the neighbourhood kids’ band and has even had a CD cut. Alessandro wanted to be a computer professional despite being born into a family that ran a restaurant business. Yet, by the time they were 13, both were on the threshold of what turned out to be a promising career option.

Adam got into this line for pocket money. "I wasn't interested in either cooking or food. At 12, I was washing dishes at a small restaurant in my hometown, Frankfort Illinios, a suburb of Chicago. The reasons were purely financial. A year later the chef decided to leave for Las Vegas and trained me to cook. That's how I became a chef at the age of 13." Everyday, he made fresh bread, cream puffs and grilled steaks fish and shrimp. "I didn’t think anything about this being a promising career or anything. It was just because I was getting US$2 more than my colleagues at the time. The interest started much later with formal training and working in professional kitchens."

As for Alessandro, he says as a child he hated the very idea of being in the restaurant business. "My whole life was spent in a restaurant. My parents ran one in Bologna, a small town in northern Italy. That was the last thing I wanted to do when I grew up." But his parents thought otherwise. They convinced him to give it a shot by enrolling him for a five-year culinary course when he was 13. "I went for the course just to make them happy." But soon he was hooked. Alessandro was to join the family business but was so impressed by the restaurant he joined for his three-month internship that it was seven years before he left that place to join his family restaurant. What about his parents? "Of course they were not happy. But they realised I really liked that place, so let me be."

Alessandro moved out of Bologna four years ago when his family decided to sell the restaurant business. He joined Hyatt and worked in Serbia for three years before moving to Muscat in April 2007. Adam has been more adventurous. He reached Muscat in May 2007 after working in Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Thailand and even cruise ships. "I love what I do. I don’t want to re-invent the wheel with my food. I just want to do it right."

Adam loves spicy food, "the kind that wakes you up." This is a taste he acquired at 20 while working as a sous chef at Hollywood Casino in west Chicago. Other cooks were Mexicans and twice his age. "They ate with chillies in one hand and tortilla chips in the other. If you don't do that, they don't give you the same respect." Alessandro, however, sticks to his roots. Favourite food is "pasta, of course" and the bologna sausage he has grown up seeing his mother cook. "I remember standing in the kitchen as a child watching my mother make Bologna sausage in a big pot. It was like a rit-ual, she starts in the morning and the process takes almost the entire day."

Both don't have any celebrity chef who they look up to. For Alessandro it's a bit of each chef he has met through the years. Adam too says the ones he looks up to are the chefs he has worked with. He feels there's nothing better than good home-cooked food. "That's why I like the small coffee shops – the kind where the cook lives upstairs. These are the places where food comes from heart. It's like eating in their house. And a restaurant, set up in that sense, is a very special place."

Adam cooks off duty but Alessandro wants time out and prefers to eat food cooked by others. "Off duty I cook nothing. I don't want to eat anything that I cook. So I eat outside." Adam whips up a fresh meal every time – ingredients vary from smoked meat, sausages and cheese to fresh vegetables and rice or noodles – but sticks to one large pan as he hates washing dishes as much as he loves cooking.

Adam has the last word. "One of my American chefs told me that we are all just overpaid pot washers. I do believe that but if washing pots can take you around the world, I am grateful I'm doing just that.”