Who's in the Kitchen?
Alexa Exarchopoulos
Origin Story
The family business—a Paris hotel owned by her parents and grandparents—allowed Chef Alexa to grow up steeped in food culture. She established a strong sense of cooking fundamentals in that hotel kitchen and it set her on a course as a culinary professional.
Favourite Cambridge REstaurants
Fancett's, Vanderlyle (if you can get a table), Fin Boys (for the prawn toast), and Bread & Meat (especially the superb Cuban special)
Influences
Diana Henry, for her compendious works and sense of simplicity; Val Raffali and Jackson Boxer, for their expert use of good produce; Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamini, for reintroducing spice into British cuisine
Alexa spends most days of the week heading up the kitchen at NYWine bar in Shelford. In mid 2024, a text from a friend arrived asking whether she would like to collaborate with a gourmet deli in Cambridge. The following months of food conversations and R&D spurred a new direction for Frederic’s. After plenty of discussion and bread left on the table, the collaborators decided on making Cambridge's best bagel sandwiches.
Alexa identified these sandwiches as great communicators of a concept that inspires her: good ingredients allow you to be simple. She is a lifelong devotee of food that achieves its deliciousness through simplicity. The ingredients of the bagel sandwiches were painstakingly selected not only for their superlative quality, but also the ethics and progressiveness of their operations.
The bagel sandwiches are just the beginning. With the same spirit of simplicity and second-to-none ingredients, we will be making some lovely additions to the menu very soon!