I PUT LOVE IN MY FOOD
“I put love in my food,“ says the 31-year-old executive chef. It is a success story - growing up in the slums of Phnom Penh in Cambodia and with just 3 years of schooling, Mariya Un Noun now works as Executive Chef at Farmhouse Smiling Gecko.
The mother of two came to Smiling Gecko in 2014, where she quickly attracted attention with her passion and talent for cooking. Smiling Gecko enabled her to become a chef. During her training, she spent several months in Switzerland at the hotel management school in Lucerne and interned with top Swiss chefs.
Since the opening of the Farmhouse Restaurant in 2015, Mariya has played a crucial role in the development of the dishes. The young Cambodian woman lets the local cuisine flourish in her own creative way with a lot of intuition and soul, and she also masters the fusion with the European cuisine. As of recently, she is supported by top chef Andreas Caminada, who is enthusiastic about her talent. The partnership with his Foundation “Fundaziun Uccelin“ enables young European chefs to work with Mariya at the Farmhouse and bring the beauty of the Cambodian cuisine to the world.
FARM TO TABLE
The tasty dishes in the Farmhouse Restaurant are mostly prepared with ingredients from the agricultural production of the Smiling Gecko farms.
The agricultural production units and farms are located on around 30 ha of the Smiling Gecko area measuring 120 ha in total. Producing mostly organic food, the farms concentrate on poultry and pig husbandry as well as vegetable production.
Apart from organic fruit and vegetables, eggs and fish, bread and pastries from the Smiling Gecko bakery are also used. Even the meat products come from Smiling Gecko's own butchery.
The superb quality of the locally produced food contributes, besides the Farmhouse kitchen's sensational culinary art, to the great taste of all dishes.
