Ioulios Kalapodas

Every summer, from the time he was a little child until high school, he spent holidays in the most beautiful places of Greece. Following his father, who mastered into the kitchens of great seasonal hotels, he learned firsthand the delicious secrets of a casserole and met all the goodies offered by the Greek land. Naturally, Ioulios Kalapodas’ fate was forever bound to cooking. During the winter of 1990, he started attending Tourist Occupations in the Educational Institution of Thessaloniki for two years, while during the summer of the same year he worked in a professional kitchen for the first time. Although the position he had was not exactly what he wanted, as he was hired as a dishwasher assistant, he spent several hours observing the other cooks.

The parental advice to go through all kitchen positions in order to understand how the dish-production chain works proved to be wise. After two years of practice in «Athos Palace» and «Grecotel Pella Beach Resort», he was finally ready to enter the world of cold dishes. He started as an assistant, evolved into a more responsible position, then entered warm cuisine, took a deep dive into the pastry and ended up monitoring the whole kitchen, as a Sous Chef. During summers, he was a seasonal cook in hotels of Macedonia and during winters he continued to enrich his knowledge by working in large social event venues and city hotels. From 2001 to 2007, he was occupied in the hotel group «Grecotel», where he became a chef for the first time in the summer of 2005, at «Grecotel Pella Beach Resort».

Two years later, already married to his wife in Kos, he took the big step and permanently moved to the Island of Hippocrates, taking over «H2O all day bar -restaurant», of the hotel «Kos Aktis Art Hotel». Since then, with true love and inexhaustible passion, he creates innovative menus, respecting the local cuisine while following international gastronomic trends, always having as a first priority the quality and freshness of the materials. Apart from treating hotel guests with various delights, he is also actively engaged to education. Making good use of his valuable experience in educational programs as well as in teaching, since he was a trainer in Cooking and Pastry Schools both in Kalymnos and Kos, he participates in the organization of gastronomic seminars and teaches at various public or private cooking schools, from time to time.