In late December, Dorothy Maras wrote an open letter on social media addressing a year fraught with unfathomable heartache.
“Dear 2016: Please go away now. You took my mother, my husband and yes, even my dog, but you didn’t manage to break me. I will forever remember you with despair and disdain.”
You would think that slap across the face of fate would finally force some good karma her way. Not quite. On Jan. 7, a massive tree fell on her Pebble Beach home.
What’s that verse about God never giving you too much to handle?
A profoundly positive person, Maras (the culinary liaison and event coordinator for Pebble Beach Food & Wine) leaned heavily on her loyal group of family and friends “who surrounded me and took care of me when I couldn’t even manage to lift my head off my pillow. For that I am grateful and thankful.”
Long the woman dubbed “the chef whisperer” for her ability to juggle both chef egos and their strange ingredient requests, Maras gears up once again for the physical and emotional challenge of helping organize a culinary extravaganza for 9,000 guests (the 10th PBFW takes place April 20-23).
This year no one would blame her if she wanted to melt again into that pillow and wallow in her misery. After all, sourcing Amish red hay or East Peruvian ginseng extract seems silly next to the loss of her one great love, her husband of 25 years who died of cancer at age 52 just three days after last year’s event.
But giving up or giving in are not options. Her husband wouldn’t stand for it.
This resilient woman, who once managed The Old Bath House during its heyday, sees the world through the eyes of the late Fatih Ildiz, a handsome and funny Turkish naval officer who always saw the wine glass as half full.
We meet at Artemis Turkish Kitchen, Carmel’s new restaurant that sadly Dorothy never got to share with her husband. It’s a quiet, comfortable place, and (fortunately for me) good food always makes people talk (world leaders take note, it’s way more effective than torture).
Across our table I hear stories about this East-West love affair, told over Turkish mezes (appetizers) such as cevizli ezme (a paste from red pepper, tomato, garlic and walnuts), kizartma (pan-fried eggplant) and sigara boregi (tightly rolled “cigars” of phyllo dough stuffed with potatoes and feta cheese).
“This food makes me want to cry,” Dorothy said.
Tears dam up behind her eyes, but they don’t spill. She blinks them back with tales of happier days. In between stories of “Sultan Fatih the Magnificent” (and lamb chops, lentil soup and the fluffiest of rice) I devour Dorothy’s culinary tidbits: There are three mother cuisines on this planet — French, Chinese and Turkish; the Turks (not the French) invented bechamel; the Turks (not the Italians) invented ravioli and sorbet; and Greeks don’t like to admit it, but their food is really Turkish (the Turks even invented yogurt).
Throughout history, Greeks and Turks have hated each other — until one day in the early 1990s when an American of Greek descent (Dorothy) met a Turkish grad student (Fatih) in an elevator at Portola Hotel & Spa in Monterey.
Fatih had entered the master’s program for electrical engineering at the Naval Postgraduate School. The fortuitous elevator meeting led to Dorothy showing Fatih and his friend around the Greek Festival — a few shots of ouzo helping grease the wheels. That cultural fusion led to a movie date, and dinner and eventually a trip to Istanbul.
“It was against the law for him to marry me, due to his high security clearance,” Dorothy said. “But we got married anyway, in a basement under an Istanbul market.”
Wanting to return to the U.S. with his secret wife, Fatih forged a pass to visit a dentist and he boarded a plane for his new home on the Monterey Peninsula. (Once home they repeated the wedding ceremony at Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel). Years later, upon return to Turkey, authorities detained Fatih for a few days.
“There was definitely some danger and intrigue,” Dorothy said. But Fatih eventually sorted out the political puzzle, allowing him to return time and again with his American wife.
“Turkey is the most underappreciated and under-marketed place on the planet,” she said. “The people are known for their gracious hospitality; you’re known as sister or brother.”
On cue, Artemis owner Erkan Demir walks to our table, excited to share his plans to make the restaurant more of a cultural center. Demir envisions a giant table loaded with exotic food, with the public tasting and sharing — an open house, if you will.
“What’s on the menu is 2 percent of Turkish food,” he said. “I want people to experience everything and understand the culture around the food.”
Part of that culture arrives with a cup of strong Turkish coffee.
We live in a world filled with uncertainty, and we all seek answers. Many Turks find theirs in the bottom of a coffee cup. As we finish our meal, Demir offers to read my fortune from the trails of coffee sludge inside the finished cup I’ve left overturned.
This custom of fortune telling is at least as old as Turkish coffee itself.
Apparently I am going to spend much of 2017 traveling, a prophecy that delights me. As for Dorothy, she does not have her future told, but when pressed about how she’d want it written, she sees things clearly:
“It would have a bit of sunshine peeking out from behind the dark hills of 2016 and there would be armies of family and my brothers and sisters in the culinary community holding me up trying to reach toward those rays of sun.”
Mike Hale can be reached at thegrubhunter@att.net. Listen to his weekly radio show “Food Fodder” at noon Wednesdays on KRML, 102.1 FM.
