Under the warm sun of Avgorou, a young girl runs barefoot across the fields. Her feet are caked with red earth; her dress dusty; her hair flies loose.
From this distance, she can smell her grandmother’s bread, fresh from the oven. She can almost taste the olives and halloumi. There will be watermelon and glyki for dessert, she thinks. And her family will laugh and eat and talk at the table underneath the vines.
That was 60 years ago. Today, Loulla Astin (née Solomonidou) is known around the world: a woman from a small village who shot to stardom on the strength of her Cypriot roots…
A celebrity chef, Loulla rose to fame in the early 90s. What began as a guest spot on the BBC’s Eggs n Baker quickly led to repeat guest appearances on This Morning with Richard and Judy, and then her own cookery show on Sky. Since then, she’s met Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, cooked for Ant and Dec, and even hobnobbed with the Queen.
“There was an event at Buckingham Palace,” Loulla recalls. “It was for people from the catering industry. I thought my invitation was a mistake, but I went along anyway. And after all the hand-shaking and such, one of the ladies-in-waiting took me aside and said I could meet the Queen in person.
“I waited in the corridor, and the Queen came right up to me. She was ever so pleasant, asking questions and all that. So I asked one of my own: “‘Do you like Greek food, Your Majesty?’ She agreed she did. ‘Then it’s a good thing you married a Greek!’ I replied. She laughed and laughed. Her ladies were ever so worried – they thought I’d told a dirty joke!”
Since then, Loulla has brushed shoulders with many a royal. But her true passion has always been feeding the people: ‘the Kosmos’ as she calls them. And that story begins beneath the endless Cyprus sun…
“We ran wild through the village, sunburnt and happy,” Loulla recalls. “We grew our own produce, cooked our own food. And we invited everyone – friends and family – to sit at our table and eat. Every meal was a party, every gathering a celebration of life.”
The food was simple, seasonal. But it was cooked with love, and it fed the soul. “It was a happy life,” Loulla adds. “Not easy by any means – whose was back then? But we were surrounded by family and friends, and isn’t that all that matters?”
Loulla’s idyllic upbringing was cut short – as so often happened in the 1960s – by politics. Her father, a policeman, lost his job.
“There were five of us; four were girls,” Loulla reveals. “How could my father afford to marry us all? So in 1966 he moved us to Manchester – to a three-storey home in Cheetham Hill shared by two other families…”
The change was a shock. “My father found a job managing in a club. My mother took in piecework – we slept and woke to the sound of her sewing machine.
“My sisters and I went to school to learn English. It was difficult,” she sighs. “In Cyprus, my elder sister always got tens in school – that was an A grade back then. But I would get six or seven – I was always playing, or cooking, or eating – I’d wait till my yiayia was asleep, and then pinch her anari! I certainly didn’t want to study.
When Loulla left for England, her village teacher suggested the family should push her off the boat during the voyage. “‘You’ll never be anything in this life’ he told me. But years later, he apologised, and he cried. I forgave him, of course. Because no matter what anyone said, I’d always believed in myself. And, like my parents, I believed in hard work…”
Within a year of arriving in the UK, Loulla’s family had saved enough to put a deposit on a house. They moved again, and Loulla (who, when she wasn’t cooking, loved to draw) began a course in fashion design: “My dad hoped I’d be a dentist. I hate blood. No thank you, I said!”
Instead, Loulla became a designer, working for brands such as Selfridges, flying to Paris and visiting the prêt-à-porter shows three times a year! But when her family bought a restaurant, all that began to change…
“It was a small place on Oxford Street in Manchester,” recalls Loulla. “Now, my father couldn’t even boil an egg – but he taught himself to make doner kebabs, and soon customers were queuing round the corner!”
On the strength of his success, Loulla’s father expanded the business, hiring a young Englishman. “That was my Stewart,” smiles Loulla. “We married in 1975. And, in 1981, we opened our own restaurant in Fallowfield.”
This was, of course, called Kosmos Taverna. “I wanted the whole world to taste Cypriot food!” Loulla enthuses. “Everyone was welcome to come and sit and eat, to try our avgolemoni, afelia, dolmades, koupepia, kalamari.”
Almost the whole world did come to taste Loulla’s dishes. Among the customers, were more than a few television presenters and producers.
A stint as the resident chef on The Afternoon Show, appearances on UK Food Live Channel 5, and a myriad of other media opportunities followed. But all of it paled in comparison, says Loulla, to the simple joys of cooking for family.
“To this day, I’m so excited when my sisters visit! I spend days preparing the dishes they love: olive bread, kolouri, glyka. And when we sit down to eat – it’s like we’re back in Cyprus, back in Avgorou under the vines once more!”
Although Loulla hasn’t lived in Cyprus for 40 years, she’s returned many times.
“I love England, it has been very good to me. But I am still Cypriot, inside and out. Before my dad died, he asked for my forgiveness for taking me away from the land of my heart.
“But it was the best thing he could have done – he could never have supported us in Cyprus; I would never have been able to marry, to meet a wonderful man and have children and grandchildren. I would never have opened a restaurant and fed the world…”
Today, Loulla has sold Kosmos Taverna; given up her TV appearances. But she’s still feeding the world.
“I wrote a book,” she enthuses. “It’s all my traditional Greek Cypriot recipes – hundreds of them. Tiropita, aubergines yakni, trachanas, faki. It tells you how to make your own halloumi, how to preserve vine leaves, how to bottle tomatoes and bake baklava and fry loukmades.”
She’s called it, of course, My Kosmos, My Kitchen.
“It has been 60 years now,” she concludes. “But in my heart, I am still running wild and free, barefoot through Avgorou. I come home and there are my sisters and cousins and aunts and friends, all sitting at the same table, enjoying the same food.
“This is the Cyprus I remember. This is my island. A place that welcomes the world to its table. And eats together.”
To follow Loulla, visit the Facebook page ‘Loulla Astin’, My Kosmos, My Kitchen is available on amazon.co.uk
