Meet Tan Uckan of Nils Mediterranean Cuisine

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tan Uckan.

Hi Tan, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
I was born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey. I graduated in Culinary art in 2000 and lived in Turkey until I was 33. I had 2 restaurants and 1 commissary kitchen in which we would deliver food to factories. In 2008 we did a very bad investment as a company and it made us lose everything we. After those 3 hard years, I decided to move out of my country and I moved to New Orleans in 2011 with one suitcase and $500. Those days were very hard for me because I got tossed into another language, culture, food, and so many other things. I had left my family back in Turkey and tried my hardest to bring my family into the US. I lived in Nola (New Orleans, Louisiana) for almost 8 years and worked in a couple of different restaurants, and worked in a bunch of different fields as my second job. I worked almost 16 hours every day. I brought my kids after 5 years of struggling however I wasn’t able to bring my wife. Then I moved to NC and I started working at Little Italy Maggiano’s.

A couple of months later I had a good offer to cooperate chef position and I accepted and started working with them until we had to quarantine due to covid on March 26th, 2020 then I was out of a job in July 2020 since work became online and the chef wasn’t needed it on site. That was the day I decided not to work with anyone anymore and started my food truck adventure in July 2020. We built the Medi Bites Food truck in July 2020-December 2020 and we started operating on the 15th of December 2020. We ran our food truck for almost 9 months and after that, we had the opportunity to get our restaurant. We bought Nils Mediterranean Cuisine 28th of December since then we have been operating Nil’s and we are very happy to have it.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s always hard because we are small business owners we have to take care of our business more than a big business would because we don’t have that much capital to cover if something happens.

Also, it’s hard for us to find an employee because people sometimes think that they don’t have the opportunity to come up however that’s not the case. For example, we have a food truck and restaurant so we have more opportunities we can offer. Also being an owner and a chef makes you work so many hours. Even if we have to work so hard we absolutely love what we are doing because we cook with love every single day we are open.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Nils Mediterranean Cuisine?
We are a small modern Mediterranean Cuisine restaurant, we make daily fresh and healthy food all over the Mediterranean Countries. All of our customers enjoy our dishes because of how fresh our food is and our polite service. We do weekly specials and affordable fine dining foods every week.

We do a ton of catering events and community events. We are open Tuesday to Saturday between 11 am to 8 pm. We make everybody feel special in our restaurant.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and are any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
I moved here from New Orleans in July 2019 and started working as a cooperate chef a couple of months later Covid hit and I lost my job. After that, I had enough time to think and find a way out. I decided to not work for someone else anymore and I followed my dreams. I had already tried to get a food truck when I was living in Nola however I wasn’t able to do it because I didn’t have the finance to make it happen and sold it before I moved to NC. I used that money for moving to NC instead.

So after I lost my job I saved a small amount of money and started to work on the food truck. I made plans for everything and started my business in 2020 July. I learned that if you want something you have to believe in it with all your heart and stick to it. Now here I am I have a restaurant and a food truck… I wish the best for myself and my family. Thank you.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.nilsmediterraneancuisine.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nils_mediterraneancuisine/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/medi.bites.96
• Twitter: @bites_medi