The Salad Chef | Kristian Trifonov
It is 9 a.m. on Saturday and Kristian Trifonov is already in the kitchen preparing his working station for the busy day at the restaurant. He is working as a salad chef at one of the busiest restaurants in Sofia — “Happy.”
Kristian is 30 years old and has been working as a salad chef for almost 10 years now. After high school, he started working as a server but shortly after that he discovered his passion for cooking and moved to the kitchen. “I found my passion accidentally,” he says. During the years, Kristian has worked in 13 restaurants in Bulgaria and usually moves to a new one every year to keep learning and discovering new recipes and ideas.
Kristian did not have the intention to work as a chef but his life led him to take this professional path. “I didn’t take any cooking courses, all I do is work hard and watch YouTube videos to follow the new trends,” he says. Restaurants have different training policies but Kristian says that self-motivation is important as well as being skillful by nature.
“Preparation is the most important thing when working in a kitchen,” he says. After a hot cup of coffee and a kitchen briefing, his day starts with two hours of preparation — stocking vegetables, a lot of cutting, sharpening knives, cleaning, and disinfection. The same kind of preparation is done in the late afternoon, just before dinner time. Kristian usually works with his best friend — Ivan, who was also inspired by him to work as a salad chef.
“The restaurant is very busy during the weekends and we make a few hundred salads per day,” says Kristian. The restaurant offers about 25 different types of salads and he is responsible for making each one in under five minutes. The pandemic has not changed his working style because of the delivery and pickup service at the restaurant.
“I like the dynamic atmosphere at restaurants and this is what makes me feel alive,” he says. Kristian chose to work as a salad chef because of the intensive workload during pick hours, compared to other cooking stations.
Kristian can make salads as well as work on other kitchen stations such as burger, grill, spaghetti, express grill, and precook. He likes to experiment and decorate dishes in a unique way depending on the season and the occasion in the restaurant. What he doesn’t like about his job is that sometimes there are conflicts between kitchen and saloon staff: “There is a constant war between us!”
“My work is my life,” he shares. Kristian usually works five days a week with shifts of 12 hours or more. The restaurant is his new home and colleagues have become friends and family. “The happiest moment in my life was when I met my girlfriend,” he says. They have been together since they met each other a few years ago in a restaurant where Kristian was working just for a day and where she was a server.
Because of the pressure associated with the role, Kristian does not want to be a head chef or a manager in any restaurant but wants to be appreciated as a professional and known as one of the best salad chefs. “My overall goal is to own a small restaurant,” he says. His craziest dream is to have a Michelin Star.
“Working in so many restaurants has taught me to be open-minded,” says Kristian. He describes himself as fair, persistent, and motivated and shares that “Mutual respect is the most important for me.” As a chef, Kristian has met a lot of people and he says — “Life is a mirror, if you do good to people, they will return good, and the opposite.”
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Borislav Tsvetanov is a senior student at the American University of Bulgaria and is majoring in Business Administration with a minor in Integrated Marketing Communication. From this story, he learned a lot about passion and self-motivation.
