Chef Traian Ioan Balan Stanescu

Chef At Home In Amsterdam

Heeya,

I'm a 29 years old chef originally from Romania, left my home country after high-school looking for a better life and ended up in London where I started working as a dishwasher at Wahaca, in Covent Garden. There I was lucky enough to learn all the basics of being a chef even from the dishwasher area, from there I worked my way up through all the stations.

Lived in London for 4,5 years and right before Covid went back to Romania for 1 year, then I got contracted through LinkedIn to work for a cruise ship Paris-Rouen, worked there for a few months then I was offered a seasonal job at Cafe de Paris in middle of St-Tropez and after almost a year I ended up in Amsterdam where I ve been living for the past 2 years.

For me, cooking is...

Something I cannot describe..had so many moments where I wanted to quit but those were in essence the most proud moments of my life at the same time.

I learned to cook at...

Started as dishwasher and worked my way up through all the sections and after 3 years of activity I did a cooking school in Constanta, Romania as well