Andreas Mavrommatis, the Cypriot chef who spent four decades elevating Greek and Cypriot cuisine to the highest levels of French gastronomy and earned a place in the Michelin guide, has died suddenly at the age of 69.
His death, announced on Sunday, prompted an outpouring of grief from the culinary worlds of France, Greece and Cyprus. Chefs, colleagues and friends described a man who brought Greek and Cypriot flavour to the top table of international gastronomy without ever losing his humility or generosity. Tributes also came from Cypriot political figures, who spoke of someone who honoured his homeland abroad and elevated Mediterranean cuisine on a world stage.
Mavrommatis was born in Agios Ioannis Agrou in the Pitsilia region and left for Paris to study Psychology. He quickly realised it was not his calling, but finished his degree regardless — unwilling, as he later said, to give anyone the chance to say he had failed and become a restaurateur instead.
While still a student, he and his brother Evagoras bought a grocery shop in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, filled it with Greek products and named it Les Délices d’Aphrodite. They painted it themselves and built the shelves by hand. When the shop turned over 200 francs on its first day and 1,000 on its first Saturday, the brothers knew they had something. Speaking to Omikron magazine in April 2007, Mavrommatis said that in almost any other country their venture would have struggled from the outset, but in France, people were willing to try new things.
He went on to train at the renowned Lenôtre cookery school, where he encountered French cuisine for the first time and, by his own account, found it transformative. The business grew steadily — first into a restaurant bearing the Mavrommatis name, then into a network of 10 catering units across France with more than 200 permanent staff. A third brother, Dionysis, joined the management alongside Evagoras.
Over the years the restaurants became meeting places for some of France’s most prominent figures. Artists including Alekos Fassianos, filmmaker Costa-Gavras and singer Georges Moustaki were friends of the family. Politicians were regulars too, among them former president François Hollande and Emmanuel Macron, who frequented the Rue Daubenton restaurant.
His inclusion in the Michelin guide surprised no one who had watched his career. He had managed, over four decades, to lift Greek cuisine above the folkloric image it sometimes carried in Europe and establish it as a serious presence in one of the world’s most demanding culinary markets.
Mavrommatis also brought his cooking to Cyprus, with Vivaldi by Mavrommatis at the Four Seasons hotel in Limassol, which closed in 2022, though he maintained close ties with the hotel and its kitchen team.
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