Born and bred by George Zaharioudakis, Kri-Kri restaurant is the Paradise of imaginative seafood dishes and meeting point of people who appreciate and demand the essence of culinary delight.
Creative, talented, cosmopolitan: George Zaharioudakis never stops to move around his passion which is the food, to be informed, to teach and enrich his place with new ideas. His boldness and consistency made him today, after 32 years, not only an expert in the philosophy of Mediterranean cuisine but an active owner with unlimited interest who welcomes people who inquire high quality food.
In 1977 George Zaharioudakis was in Switzerland where he studied to become a cook, working at the same time in significant restaurants as a chef. In the summer of 1982 he worked at Elounda Beach of Crete while next winter went back to Switzerland and started a long-term cooperation with a "contractors" company restaurants based in Lausanne, a company with which he is working till today. More than 100 chefs, each one specialized in his country's cuisine, travel on behalf of the Switzerland company around the world to establish new restaurants. Each chef remains at his destination up to 40 days, creating menus, cooking the recipes and train the local chefs. George Zaharioudakis has created menus of Mediterranean cuisine all over the world: New York (19 jobs!), Dubai, Quebec, Key West and Toronto is just a few of the places he has been active and sometimes goes back for structural changes.
Kri-Kri came into his life in 1983. In his own place, the wonderful Agia Pelagia of Heraklion, George Zaharoudakis is going to make true a life's dream: a hearted and hospitable restaurant with well cooked dishes of high quality. Very soon Kri-Kri classifies among the best restaurants of its kind and his owner tries year after year for even better dishes and more imaginative and skilled recipes which are going to leave the customers with the best of memories. Kri-Kri's cuisine is specialized in seafood shells and fish. Raw materials is the A and Z of the restaurant's philosophy: on daily basis during the Summer months George Zaharioudakis receives the "elite" of shells from Brittany and Normandy, two of the most famous areas of French, and from Greece.
Meanwhile, within the minimum time he makes between Heraklion, Switzerland and long distance trips in order to build Mediterranean restaurants, he attends seminars in France for growing methods of shells and the development of the inconceivable progress as he emphasizes. Often in Heraklion, under the shadow of Knossos, he hosts seminars to chefs from all over the world who want to enrich their knowledge on Cretan and Mediterranean diet.
Perspicacious and creative he has the conviction that cooking never ends. Everything develops rapidly and you can't love this profession if you don't keep up. Even if you don't use some new methods like for example molecular cuisine, you should know its progress is very amazing. Cuisine is a timeless culture.
In Kri-Kri, Greeks and foreigners enjoy seafood dishes of high aesthetics and matter. An inside secret, excellent materials, solitude and meditation in the kitchen during the morning hours and the creation of many dishes in two times: the last additions and the execution of special wishes of the customer happen in a second phase in front of him. George Zaharioudakis is always there, so visitors can watch him cook. If come across any noise, don't be surprised: it could be all 16 chefs of the presidents of the USA, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and many other countries who have honoured the "master" with their presence or the presidents of the Balkans who have visited him in order to try his mythical seafood dishes
George Zaharioudakis chooses some of his favorite dishes and unveils some secrets about their creation.
- Aromatic salts cover the fish overnight. The fish is built in salt and then it's going in the oven. Finally it comes out naked after we break the salt, but when eaten it's not salty at all.
- Kri-Kri's ravioli are coined with seafood flavor, so they won't rely on the lobster filling for that distinct sea freshness.
- The seafood soup with pectinidaes and porfyres is extraordinary: porfyres have the luxury to give all the iodine of the sea to the soup. Saffron gives even higher nutritional value.