Mariusz Drabik
OUR GOODMAN FAMILY
Meet Mariusz, our Head Chef at Goodman City.
Mariusz is the Head Chef of Goodman City and one of our longest serving team members. When not in the kitchen, he loves spending time with his family, and watching football. “My favourite team is Cracovia, my team from Krakow” but, after 18 years in London, has adopted Arsenal as his second side.
Mariusz is one of the Goodman old guard. “I’ve been here close to 15 years now,” he says. “I started in Mayfair with John Cadieux, and the old team, then I moved to the opening of Canary Wharf, on the Josper, and then came here to City. I worked hard and moved up to Head Chef.” Mariusz smiles. “Goodman is somewhere you can do that.”
If eating at Goodman, Mariusz brings a group and orders as much as possible. “I like to share, and discuss, and taste everything – but I order a ribeye for myself. Sometimes a strip, but mostly a ribeye, or a bone-in rib eye, or the Goodman ribeye. Fillet can be tasty, you can make it nice, but ribeye is the best of the steaks.”
“Goodman has shown me a different thing. We watch out for each other. It’s nice. We’re more than a small team. We are a family.”
Life could have been very different. “I was in construction,” says Mariusz. “My options in school, in Poland, were different … I came here, with no English, and life put me in the kitchen. I worked at Carluccio’s, they taught me the basics, sent me to school. I wanted to learn, I liked to cook…”
And then Goodman came along, clearly to Mariusz’s delight. “Goodman has shown me a different thing. We watch out for each other. It’s nice. We’re more than a small team. We are a family.”
CREDITS
Interview by Neil Davey
Photography by Tom Bowles