A Day in the life of the Khora kitchen crew

A text at 7.50am from my friend, our Syrian chef, saying he will wake me up in half an hour, which wakes me up. We manage to get in the van by 8.30am and head to central market where my friend haggles with the local guys in Arabic to get the best price for the veg for lunch. In the kitchen, under close instruction, the day’s kitchen crew make hummus, baba ghanoush, fateh and salad with bread. At 1pm we take the food up to the café. There’s already about 60 people hanging out and drinking chai, half of which are children. Everyone gets served at their table although some kids obviously get a bit over excited and run up to try and be first. Over the next couple of hours we serve 140 portions while people relax with their family and friends, play chess, read or get on with a bit of work. By 2pm it’s time to start cleaning the kitchen including the infamous fat filter which collects all the gunk that goes down the sink and must be ‘milked’ and emptied every day. It smells like a long forgotten drain. 3pm, time for the kitchen meeting! We have a new volunteer chef who is helping us to improve the kitchen. After this year, most of the people who work here are used to cooking in tents, on roofs, in warehouses, on forecourts, over fires and in the back of vans. We all need some reminders. In the evening we make a few extra portions for people coming to Greek and English classes, clean down the kitchen again and finish by 8pm. Luckily our weekly meeting is moved until the following day. Dinner, cold beer, bed.