California may be a long way from Piraeus but one local chef has proved that you can build a transatlantic reputation for excellence as he downed tools at his seafood restaurant in the port city to take up teaching at one of the world's top culinary schools.

An original and talented trendsetter, Lefteris Lazarou, at his restaurant Varoulko, has enriched his perpetually evolving repertory of dishes by cooking jaunts all over the globe while remaining firmly grounded in a Mediterranean aesthetic. And so, night after night, the prolific chef serves up seafood with a twist.

Traditional Greek dishes are reinvented by him: zucchini stuffed not with beef mincemeat but with crabmeat and shrimp, artichokes a la polita accompanied by jumbo shrimp, phyllo dough triangles filled with sturgeon, cabbage dolmades filled with crayfish and leeks - the combinations seem endless. Varoulko is also famous for its ways with monkfish, which Lazarou introduced to Athenians many years ago. The by now classic monkfish liver riganato is served in a sauce concocted of honey, balsamic vinegar and Greek mountain oregano.

The restaurant's array of intriguingly tempting seafood creations also includes swordfish with porcini mushrooms, lobster with wild rice, celery and champagne sauce, rockfish (petrobarbouno) carpaccio as well as a surprising soup made with cuttlefish ink.

The dishes on Varoulko's menu change each day, determined by the chef's whim and the fruits of his daily excursions to the market. Those in the know simply leave it to Lefteris to decide on the course (or rather, courses) of their evening's repast.

California cooking
This past summer, Lazarou left Piraeus for the western coast of the US, where he shared his cooking secrets with students at the Greystone campus of the Culinary Institute of America, located in Californias wine-producing Napa valley.

Founded in 1946, the prestigious Culinary Institute of America is the only residential college in the world devoted exclusively to culinary education. The Institute's bachelor degree programs are based in New York, while the Greystone campus offers continuing education courses for food service professionals.

It was here, in the renovated former Franciscan monastery housing the Institute, that 100 professional chefs were initiated into the mysteries of Lazarous artful creations: his famous baby kalamari served with a pesto sauce; the fried peskandritsa fish liver which was judged even tastier than foie gras by an appreciative audience; the sauce with which Lazarou accompanies roast fish at Varoulko, which, though consisting of a simple egg-and-lemon base, it manages to rise above its station to a creamy consistency. Needless to say the recipes were enthusiastically received and may, perhaps, soon be included in exclusive US menus.