Jozef Breza

Coming Up

Culinary training can carry both production and transmission, and Jozef Breza’s education at Matej Bela University in Banská Bystrica held both. Alongside training as a chef, he studied pedagogy with the idea that he might one day teach future chefs and waiters. That gives the craft record a practical emphasis: not only how food is made in service, but how technique, standards, and professional habits are passed from one worker to the next. Hotel kitchen work demands pace, repetition, and coordination inside a brigade. At Kempinski Hotel near Štrbské pleso in Štrbské pleso, Slovakia, Breza worked as a cook in the alpine setting of the High Tatras. The work placed him in a polished professional operation, where technique is tested by volume, timing, and the choreography of service. Smaller guesthouse cooking changes the distance between kitchen, guest, and place. Breza’s move to Gašperov Mlyn brought that scale into the center of his work, with the kitchen closer to the daily life of the house and its visitors. He now leads the kitchen there as chef / head of kitchen.

Where They Are Now

The kitchen at Gašperov Mlyn in Batizovce, Slovakia operates within a family-run guesthouse setting, where hospitality is less anonymous than in a larger hotel structure. Breza’s current role as chef and head of kitchen sits in that proximity: to guests, to nature, and to the routine demands of a smaller house. That scale was not incidental to the move. Breza describes the appeal plainly: "I often wondered what it would be like to work in a smaller, family-run guesthouse, where the cook is closer to the guests and nature. And then came the offer from Gašperův mlýn. It was a dream come true." The current practice gathers the earlier parts of the record without overstating them: chef training, pedagogy at Matej Bela University in Banská Bystrica, and cook work at Kempinski Hotel near Štrbské pleso. At Gašperov Mlyn, those pieces meet in a kitchen built around service, closeness, and the working responsibilities of a head of kitchen.

In Their Words “I often wondered what it would be like to work in a smaller, family-run guesthouse, where the cook is closer to the guests and nature. And then came the offer from Gašperův mlýn. It was a dream come true.” “I don't have that much. I trained as a chef, but after graduating I studied pedagogy at the Matej Bela University in Banská Bystrica so that I could one day teach future chefs and waiters.”