Leading
the way
from 2010 to today
When he began his experiments, not even food journalists were familiar with the subject. Usually, the first question they asked him was, “But, shouldn’t fish be eaten fresh?”.
However, as he himself said in his interview with Dimitris Antonopoulos in 2019: “I have the feeling that storing it in special refrigerators with an adjustable microclimate and PH control will be the next big thing in fish…”. And he was right, this has indeed started happening recently.
As Marinos explains, there are many different types of fish in the sea and each one needs to be handled differently. Some fish should be eaten fresh, but others need to be aged to some extent. One example is dusky grouper – the fishermen of old said you should let it “sit” in the fridge for two days before cooking.
As the proprietor of Marathia, Marinos initially began ageing fish using simple, natural methods and then began experimenting using refrigerators which he had patented. He made sure that these maintained a specific humidity and temperature so that the gutted fish could be aged. He posted several of his tests on Instagram, and in 2018 he was contacted by Alessandro Cuomo, owner of the Italian company Stagionello which specializes in building ageing chambers. The company had just built the Pesciugatore, a chamber for ageing salmon. Mr. Cuomo was interested in Marinos’s experiments and they discussed the possibility of working together with the result that Stazionello sent Marinos a chamber so that he could help, among others, in its further development.
Marinos began using the Pesciugatore and, after many experiments, he gradually achieved the results he was looking for. In 2020, Marinos Souranis and Stagionello presented the chamber for the first time at HORECA in Athens, at the Varanakis Catering Equipment stand. Since then, the Pesciugatore has been sold together with two of Marinos’ recipes.
Thanks to the outstanding results he has achieved ageing suitable fish, Marathia’s cuisine is now often enriched with excellent dishes based around this technique. In 2021, a fully equipped ageing room was created and it now includes 3 special maturation chambers and other modern and specialized R&D equipment.
In June 2025, the book “Fish and Maturation. A Handbook for the Proper Maturation and Handling of Fish” (Nefeli Publications) was published.
Through its 176 elegant pages, rich in content and substance, the book aims to break the age-old stereotype that fish must be eaten fresh. The excellent result reflects the author’s love and dedication to tradition, innovation, localism, and, of course, good food. The book is the first and only one in the literature to deal with this subject and has been produced in collaboration with food technologists. It includes a wealth of photographs, sketches, and recipes.