THERE is a saying that you should never trust a thin chef. When you meet Muhammad Samer Al-Azan, you know you can trust him: He is very tall and has the imposing dimensions commensurate with his senior position as the Executive Chef in Jeddah's Sheraton Hotel. He raised his eyebrows when I asked him if he loves food: “Of course I love food! Food is not only feeding the stomach – food is a feeling, it is taste and aroma. Being a chef is like being an artist – it is a creative job.” Al-Azan is from Damascus, Syria, and his reasons for wanting to become a chef are romantic: “It is a love story,” he said laughing. “I come from a family of five brothers and two sisters and our culture is that on Fridays the women in the house mustn't do anything that day. So the men do everything because we respect how much the women do in the home from Saturday to Thursday. When I was very young, my father used to do the breakfast and lunch at home, so when I was ten years old, I learnt a lot from him. When I finished my schooling, I decided that I wanted to be a chef.” After an initial two years at college in Damascus studying Food and Beverage Management, Al-Azan landed a job at the InterContinental Hotel in Al-Ain as a trainee chef. “It was not very good money, but it was very good experience. I worked with a British chef – I can still remember him, his name was James MacDonald. First, I worked for one year in the Oriental kitchen, then a year in the main kitchen dealing with international food, and then nine months training as a pastry chef, then three months in the bakery. After those three years, I felt like I was a real chef!” He moved on to the Grand Hyatt in Muscat for two and a half years. “I was a Coffee Shop Chef. I really enjoyed it there and I loved the scenery, the sea and mountains. Then I got an offer to work at the opening of the Sheraton in Algeria. They wanted me to work for only six months and then to organize the catering for the Organization of African Unity conference in June 1999.” This was the biggest challenge of Al-Azan's career. “I was the Banquet Chef and we had over 4000 people – 52 presidents, 110 ministers, and 4,000 guests. The delegation was there for only three days, but it was 15 days' work for me. You know, before any president comes, there are people checking the kitchen – the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Defense, everybody was in the kitchen. They took samples of food just when it was ready to be served, and doctors were also in the kitchen. I am very proud of my work for that function. I had 170 cooks under me, we had eight kitchens, and everything else stopped while we organized this party.” Al-Azan admits that work in the kitchens for such functions is high pressure. “You run on adrenalin. The first rule is organization. We work with check lists – everyone works with a check list.” Al-Azan stayed with the Sheraton in Algeria for four years and worked his way up to being the Executive Sous-Chef. “When I was a Banquet Chef, I was not like this (he gestured toward his waist-line.) I am 120 kgs now – I was just 85 kgs then. But I have to taste everything! As Banquet Chef, I had to walk a long way, checking on all the areas, and I burned the calories off. When I became an executive, I began to spend more time in the office.” He has now been an Executive Chef in Saudi Arabia for nearly five years. When he was with the InterContinental Hotel in Taif, he organized a party for 1,000 people in honor of King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, when he opened the new dual carriageway road to Jizan in 2005. He then worked in the Madina Al-Haram Hotel for nearly three years, and then came to the Jeddah Sheraton eight months ago. “We have 32 chefs here. I have a daily meeting with the heads of each section, like the pastry chef, the sous-chef, the cold kitchen chef, the main kitchen chef, and I give them responsibility. They have their instructions and check lists. Once a week I have a meeting with all the staff. We have three resorts in Obhur under the Sheraton and I have to visit them regularly to see how their kitchens are operating. I have a very good Demi-Chef de Partie there and we discuss menus and menu changes. We have good communication between my staff and me.” Al-Azan's job satisfaction is when he cooks food for his guests, or his customers, and sees them enjoying themselves and his food. “That is what I like to see.”
