A Michelin Star in the Making | Petia Trencheva
Afternoon. It’s chilly outside and Petia Trencheva walks into the Hyatt Hotel and goes into the elevator, top floor. She shakes off the cold and immediately gets dressed into her chef’s clothing.
Petia goes into the restaurant and starts prepping. Coffee, check. Knives sharpened, check. Products and quality all good? Check! Everything is in order, so she starts making her mise en place, and does so almost automatically, a skill learned after 5 years of working there.
How much of everything she makes fully depends on how many bookings there are — which she also checks before prepping the food. From 4 pm until 7 pm, she is on the case making sure everything is ready. At 7 pm, all the fun starts. Until 10 pm, dinner goes on, orders come in, and delicious food flies out of the kitchen.
The day for the restaurant calms down a little after 10 pm, but it continues for the workers. Petia says that at this time, they are allowed a short break, and then they go right back to work for the dessert service, which lasts around one hour. Finally, the last order of the day — cleaning. Roughly an hour is spent cleaning and organizing everything to ensure that tomorrow goes just as smoothly.
Since the pandemic, Petia says that the restaurant has been much emptier, and the adrenaline with which she fell in love is no longer there. She hopes that one day, she can have her own restaurant, so that she can put her skills to the test.
“I miss the people. There’s nothing that I did before the COVID, except wearing the mask, but I miss the full restaurant every single night. It’s very different to work in the kitchen when you’re not that busy. I fell in love in this job because of the adrenaline rush during the service and now it’s just so boring”.
Petia is 25 and has worked as a professional chef since she graduated from HRC Culinary academy two years ago. She lives in Sofia but was born in Razlog, a small town in the southwestern part of Bulgaria. She got her job before graduating and knew this is what she wanted to do.
“I love my job. I’ve tried a lot of things in my life and nothing made me feel so happy. I love the dynamic, the purpose, the people and mostly the food. I dream that someday I will open my own restaurant and maybe I will produce vegetables, herbs etc”.
Petia’s days are all mostly the same, as she works 6 days a week. She wakes up, gets some coffee, does some cleaning around the house, showers, then goes straight to work. She tries to spend time with friends and family whenever she gets the chance.
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Luka Lozovic is a Senior student at AUBG and studies Computer Science as a major and Psychology as a minor. He likes playing video games and watching cooking shows, which is why he chose Petia as an interview subject.
