The Voice - Thursday 3 May 2007

Your Voice

A Lady for the Special Occasion

Paphos has a thriving expatriate community and with 48 per cent of the island’s British residents deciding to settle in and around Paphos, The Voice will be bringing you regular features on personalities from the area.

Today we focus on Hilary Mossop, 43, who owns Tweedie’s Restaurant in Paphos. Hilary told David Williams her story.

“I was born in Rugby in the Midlands, but moved to Liverpool when I was young. My school years were spent in Liverpool but I went to the University of Manchester.

Food has always interested me so I studied food science. When I finished at university I went into sales; I was selling food equipment. As my career progressed I moved into sales and training, eventually ending up as the European Sales Training Manager for an engineering company.

I know it wasn’t anything to do with food, but it afforded me the opportunity to travel around Europe and taste the delights of continental food.

My partner, Craig, was born in Cyprus and we regularly came here on holiday, visiting his parents. Craig had a booming business running a pub in Shropshire, which was near the river Severn.

As I was always zipping around Europe and Craig was busy running the pub it meant that the rat-race was taking over lives. I was fast approaching 40 and thought that I had to do something to get out of the daily slog. So Craig decided to sell the pub and we took the plunge and came over to Cyprus, just after my 40th birthday.

When we first arrived here we identified a gap in the market; there wasn’t really anything offering international food with a theme. So we decided to set up Tweedie’s restaurant.

At first it was hard work, as there were so many rules and regulations, but we did our research and eventually got things moving. The language was a big barrier, but we found the Cypriots to be very helpful.

We have four people working at the restaurant. Craig is the chef, I look after front of house, and we also have a pot-washer and a waitress. We purposefully kept the restaurant small so that we could create a relaxed ambiance.

A major benefit of keeping the place small is that Craig and I can enjoy our life together, without too much stress.

All the food is prepared fresh on a daily basis and we work on bookings only; this keeps wastage down.

I think the thing that separates us from others and makes our place special is that we do theme nights. We have done a Fawlty Towers night and a Caribbean night. We do the whole show; we get dressed up, do quizzes, have games and make sure that the food is specific to the theme. I suppose we are a place for special occasions.

We also get involved with the Stage One theatre group, who are based in Emba. We put on pre-production suppers and these go down well. There next production is running from the 8th May - 12th May. They are putting on a production of Noel Coward’s Waiting in the Wings.

Charities are a big part of life in Paphos and we try to help out. We currently sponsor the red squirrel cage at the Paphos bird and Animal Park. We also get involved with Gina who does some fantastic work in supporting cancer groups.

While the tourist trade has dropped recently things are still going well for us and we are very happy”.

Tweedie’s restaurant has three excellent theme nights coming up soon: May 29th ‘Feasting on Fish’, June 19th ‘Mexican Night’ and July 11th ‘It ain’t half hot, mom’,

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