Making Food and Magic

F or Serge Madikians, dining out is theater, and he is director, designer and chef at Serevan in Amenia, NY. The winter garden filled with tall pale grasses and dry hydrangea blooms; the kitchen scents of fenugreek and Persian dried lime, and sumac; the ochre-painted walls, the bowls of  apples and pearly heads of cauliflower in the entry, and the glass baubles glittering near the gas-fed fire in one of the dining rooms below a mantel of family photos in old-fashioned frames — are all about his ideas of art and drama.            

 Madikians is an Armenian who grew up in Tehran, Iran, where his family ran restaurants for two generations. One of them, the Café Naderi, is described as Tehran’s oldest European-style café. He came to the United States in the late ’70s, studied history and philosophy at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, in California, and earned a master’s degree in public policy and economics at the New School in New York. While he worked for the City Council, negotiating budget details with the mayor’s office, he “gave a lot of little dinner parties,†he said in an interview. And he attended the French Culinary Institute at night. In time, he traded public administration for the culinary life working for star chefs in the city until he realized he hated cooking 300 dinners a night.

   “My creativity died.â€

   It was revived, however, by a shepherd in Bovina Center, NY.

   “We decided I would raise a lamb. I fed him with a bottle. I saw him every week. He would hop to me.â€

   At 8 months, Madikians had his lamb butchered.

   “I have never cooked anything as thoughtfully and respectfully as that lamb. It was a sombre, loving, gratifying experience. That is what cooking is.â€

   So he found an abandoned restaurant that started life as a 19th-century farmhouse in Amenia, and opened Serevan on May 5, 2005.

   “I’m doing something I really like. I cook food that I really enjoy.â€

  For hours, menus and information about Serevan, go to www.Serevan.com. 845-373-9800.