Chef Yohanis has made it his mission to highlight and innovate Ethiopian cuisine with his longstanding passion
for the culinary arts and Ethiopian culture.
As a renowned and popular Ethiopian chef, he has been involved with numerous restaurants including preparing signature menus for his family restaurant Antica, Ethiopian Airlines (business class) and Hyatt Regency, plus producing/hosting TV cooking/lifestyle programs. He wrote an award-winning cookbook receiving the James Beard Award for Best International Cookbook and the Julia Child First Book Award in 2020. Recently, Yohanis had the privilege of proudly accepting the honour bestowed on him by the World Tourism Organization to become the UN Tourism Special Ambassador for Gastronomy Tourism. The First UN Tourism Regional Forum on Gastronomy Tourism for Africa was held in July 2024 at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe.
With his expertise and enthusiasm, Yohanis is well equipped and skilled to be raising public awareness about the importance of developing a new paradigm for tourism that preserves authenticity whilst also achieving greater sustainability, responsibility, and accessibility
for all.
Yohanis was educated in hotel management and the culinary arts and worked abroad in the USA and France where he observed and developed a respect for fine-dining, global culinary techniques and the sourcing of quality products. Since his early childhood, Yohanis had always been fascinated with traditional feasts; planning and consuming different Ethiopian foods during festivities which led to exploration and research of regional dishes and recipes around Ethiopia.
Yohanis would like Ethiopian cuisine (growing in popularity globally) to satisfy the required criteria for inscription on the representative list of the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. As a globally trained chef, Yohanis is dedicated to the creation of the next generation of multi-cultural dishes. His hospitality business, CY Dynamics, includes F&B ventures with education and documenting/preserving local assets at the core of its business strategy.
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