About

How it started: From a very young age I developed a strong passion and love for cooking. I was born in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece which in the beginning of the last century was the center of different cultures and culinary philosophies. This is the environment where my family grew up. As a kid I spent a lot of my time in my mother’s kitchen, where all the women of my family prepared the daily meals, but also created all the complicated dishes for special occasions. These memories inspired my desire to start a food blog. So, as I was having breakfast one day, I came up with the word Recipiada, which I loved and therefore chose as the name of my future food blog (I basically used the English word Recipe and added “ada” in the end, which in Greek refers to something epic, like Iliad).  

The creation of the blog: After that morning, I immediately started planning my next moves. I bought the domain name and was excited and inspired to start designing the blog. I shared my thoughts and plans with my close friends and family, who really supported me and gave me great ideas and advice. It didn't take long to launch my blog and. after few months Recipiada was a reality.

The Beginning: Because of my upbringing and my Greek heritage, Recipiada invited recipes focusing mainly on the Mediterranean cuisine. Quickly enough, the blog was full of new recipes (many of which were inspired from my own family’s culinary history) and useful cooking tips. After just four months of Recipiada’s launch, I got the first good news - - one of the major newspapers in Greece decided to run a full page editorial about my blog. Then came the second piece of good news, Recipiada would be a contributor every other Sunday to the newspaper’s food section. This really pushed me to develop the blog even more!

Present: After two years running the blog with great success, I felt the need to take things to the next level. So, I decided to incorporate the blog to a gourmet shop, which would feature products from local farmers in the Mediterranean (Greece, Turkey, Italy and Spain). My goal is for Recipiada to become the leading online venue for Mediterranean products, as well as recipes.

Our Future: As the tagline says “Gastronomical Excellence,” Recipiada’s goal is to find, gather and offer Mediterranean products which have an “excellent” quality. In many cases, we will also feature recipes that our readers and clients can prepare with these products. Throughout the year, we will add new products that we discover, aiming to become the biggest source of gourmet Mediterranean food in the U.S.  

 

Michel Parente

Founder & CEO