Taigo Lepik

When it comes to creating food for the highest office in the land, there’s not many chefs that can say they’ve reached those dizzy heights.

It’s an accolade however that belongs to Taigo Lepik, who for the past decade has worked at the office of the President, fashioning exquisite creations on a daily basis.

The achievement is made even more remarkable by the fact that Taigo never had ambitions to be a chef, admitting that he just fell into the career after being late for a number of high school admissions tests. 

He decided instead to go down the vocational route and train to work in the food industry – realising that this really was his calling.

Although it wasn’t an immediate revelation, Taigo realised that his childhood had actually provided a firm foundation for working with food, as dishes served at home were created with ingredients that were readily available.

Seeing where food came from not only gave him the benefit of added understanding but also

helped him release the importance of “simple, very clean flavours.”

After his early culinary training Taigo embarked on a global journey to improve his skills – travelling to Finland, Singapore, London and Paris to learn about other cuisines and techniques.

It was in 2018 while on an internship in the French capital that he had an epiphany, realising that simplicity was the key, along with always using the best quality ingredients.

“The less you play with it, the better it is, and the less things on the plate, the easier it is to taste everything,” he said.

“ There is no need to add many different flavours to the carrot. Don’t fix the carrot, just choose a better carrot.”

Adopting that mindset has definitely paid off, with Taigo winning numerous awards and professional accolades. This includes the Medal of Merit for agriculture awarded to him by the French government in 2022 and winning the silver and gold medals at the IKA Culinary Olympics in Germany.

That may be more than enough for most chefs but not for Taigo, who is also President of the Association of Estonian Chefs. I have the dream to bring Estonia to the Olympics.

Despite being well travelled, Taigo’s own cooking centres around his home country and the ingredients that are available there.

“One of the luxuries of working in the President’s Office is that you never have to make the same menu two days running,” he said.

“How complicated a dish is depends on the time we have available and of course the availability of raw materials, but it makes each day an exciting challenge.”