Irene Matys: The Farm-to-Table Storyteller Bridging Cyprus and Canada

Some farm-to-table advocates come to the philosophy through trend pieces and restaurant menus. Irene Matys came to it through her family's olive groves in Cyprus, a refugee journey to Canada, and a decade of showing up at dawn to help plant peppers. That difference shows in everything she makes.

Roots in Cyprus

Irene Matys is a Greek Cypriot who immigrated to Canada in 1976 as a refugee. Her connection to farm-to-table living didn't start as a career choice, it traces back to her family's history as olive growers and producers of olive oil back home in Cyprus. That inheritance, a working relationship with land and food rather than an aesthetic one, has shaped the way she's built her career ever since.

A Second Home at Plan B Organic Farms

Since 2015, Matys has volunteered her time at Plan B Organic Farms, a family-owned and certified organic vegetable farm in Hamilton, Ontario, run by Farmer Rod, Farmer Alvaro, and Farmer Melanie. She's described it as her way of giving back to the country that gave her family a better life, and her involvement goes well beyond an occasional visit. In interviews, she's talked about spending Mondays, Tuesdays, and the occasional Wednesday on the farm, helping plant, weed, and harvest, and preparing CSA shares for the families who order directly from the farm. One of the things she's said she enjoys most is cooking a farm-to-table lunch for the farmers and volunteers, often feeding fourteen to sixteen people from whatever came out of the ground that morning.

It's this kind of unglamorous, repeated labor, not a single photogenic farm visit, that seems to be the actual foundation of her advocacy work.

Building a Career in Food Media

Alongside her farm work, Matys has built a career as a recipe developer, food stylist, food photographer, and writer. Her work has appeared in LCBO Food & Drink and Best Side Magazine, and she's freelanced as a food stylist for CTV and Bell Media, supporting chefs and food experts through the entire process behind a television segment, from testing recipes and grocery shopping to on-set styling. She also works directly with brands and restaurants, developing and photographing recipes for their marketing and social media.

Landing a role as a freelance recipe developer with LCBO Food & Drink reportedly checked off a goal she'd held since 1998, a reminder that a lot of this kind of career is built slowly, one relationship and one contract at a time.

My Cypriot Table

Matys eventually turned her two lives, Cypriot heritage and Canadian farm-to-table practice, into a cookbook, My Cypriot Table. It brings together authentic Cypriot family recipes, often adapted with Canadian ingredients, alongside the personal stories behind them. Other food writers and cookbook authors have described it as a heartfelt tribute to Cypriot culture and cuisine, immersive enough to read cover to cover rather than just cook from. Matys has spoken about wanting the book to serve as a legacy for her three daughters, Zoe, Alexandra, and Kristyna, connecting her refugee story to the farm-to-table values she's spent years living out.

Why Her Work Matters

What makes Matys's advocacy distinct isn't the aesthetics, though her food photography is genuinely striking, it's the consistency. Farm-to-table can easily become a marketing phrase detached from anything real. Matys's version of it is built on years of actual dirt under her fingernails, direct relationships with specific farmers by name, and a willingness to show the unpolished, early-morning parts of the work alongside the finished, styled plate. That combination of heritage, labor, and craft is a useful model for anyone building content around local food and farming, since it's a reminder that the story people connect with is rarely the styled photo alone, it's everything that had to happen before the camera came out.

You can follow her ongoing work and recipes on Instagram at @irene_matys or through her website, irenematys.com.