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Cake making as an Art
The owner of Halepi, Mr John Bibiris, has received awards and is recognised as one of the top experts in Britain in making cakes. Mr Bibiris has developed making cakes for small or grand events to a fine art and has received numerous awards.
Born in the island of ancient sculptors
Mr Bibiris was born in the Greek island of Tinos in 1943 but after the war, at the age of two, he moved with his parents to Athens. Since his early years he was attracted to confectioneries and as a teenager worked in a patisserie at Pagrati, Athens. After his national service he was employed at "Chrystopoulos", one of the well known patisseries in Greece. Realising his potential Chrystopoulos adviced him to go abroad for studies. So Bibiris went to England for a two year course at the Westminster School of Catering from where he graduated with distinction. Subsequently he was employed by a Greek Cypriot patisserie at Kentish Town. After his attempts in 1976 to buy a shop in Athens failed, he bought "Halepi", the only Greek patisserie in North London at the time. Through his excellent quality of work Mr Bibiris managed to make the Greek ship owners, the Greek embassy's staff, banks and the Greek community in general as his customers. However approximately 20% of his customers are English, Indians and Turks.
Some of his famous customers included the ex Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, Members of Parliament, famous singer Elton John, Vaggelis Papathanasiou and Demis Roussos. Also many Greek artists and singers which include Irini Papa, Rena Vlachopoulou and Katevas passed from Halepi during their visits to London.
Watercan cake
In 1973 Mr Bibiris made a cake in the shape of a watercan to mark the 10th Anniversary of the British Waterways Board. The paper "Waterways News" described the event as follows:
"The display of cream cakes, gateaux and variety of unusual breads in PSP's retail shop started the gastric juices working long before we got as far as the kitchen. Here we met John Bibiris the Patisseur and creator of the Board's cake. The outer casing which formed the can-shape, handles, lip and lid had already been made as it takes about a week for the icing to set really hard. Some of the colourful patterns had been painted in special confectionery colouring and John Bibiris was in the process of piping the roses into the sides of the can when we arrived.
No fancy mechanical piping aids for John - a cone made of grease-proof paper and filled with icing sugar; a snip with the scissors to make it slit at the pointed end of the cone and the most elaborate shapes of petals and leaves were formed in icing by the artistic hand of this professional patisseur.
Words could not really do justice to the finished masterpiece so we hope the coloured photograph above will give readers a better idea of how attractive and authentic the cake looked. The centre consisted of layers of light sponge sandwiched together with fresh cream".
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