The way a superb dish is made from a fine selection of ingredients is similar to how an excellent chef is made through the right choice of training.
The route to becoming a great chef is both challenging and requires multiple skills. Education and training provides a solid foundation on which to build a promising cookery career. To make a good chef, what ingredients should you be looking for?
Passion for profession Having a strong passion for food is what you should firstly posses. Speaking from his own experience,
Ben ODonoghue, a famous Australian TV Chef who recently visited Dusit Thani hotel said To a chef, everyday is never the same and there is so much to learn. Being a chef is therefore a challenging job and also rewarding when you see pleasure from those you cooked for. According to Chef Ben, being a good chef also means you need to challenge yourself to be better all the time.
Bo, Duangporn Songvisava, owner of an exquisite Thai restaurant Bo.lan in Sukhumvit 26 graduated with a Bachelor of Restaurant and Catering Management from Griffith University and a Master of Arts in Gastronomy from The University of Adelaide. Both universities are in Australia. She said her education experience has been useful to the management of her own restaurant. Course elements such as Accounting and Hospitality Law although not exactly the same in Thailand but are still applicable. Practical training like working in a demonstration restaurant on campus was a great experience as it prepared you with job-ready skills, Bo said.
Practical skill development For a vocational stream like Cookery, practical training is specifically important. Ben said that practical training is a crucial element that allows one to improve on-the-job skills through application of classroom lessons to the under-pressure real work environment. Australia is internationally renowned for its vocational education and training (VET) with a range of competency-based courses delivered by public Technical and Further Education (TAFE) institutes, private colleges and universities. Cookery is part of VET embracing different levels of training from Certificate to Diploma or Advanced Diploma in Hospitality. The program can be used as a pathway to other avenues of higher education where practical and theoretical training, and strategic and management skills provide a competitive edge for employment. Renowned institution William Angliss Institute of TAFE (Melbourne) has the Angliss restaurant where students can gain practical work experience cooking and serving real customers. Due to its strong relationship with industry, students have opportunities to be trained by experts and also experience work-integrated learning. Le Cordon Bleu, an internationally recognised culinary, hospitality and tourism institution has campuses in Sydney and Adelaide offering culinary arts and management. Some Australian programs offer paid seasonal employment placement such as the combined Diploma in Hospitality Management and Certificate 3 in Commercial Cookery offered by TAFE New South Wales - Illawarra Institute. This snow to surf course is delivered at the spectacular Snowy Mountains based Cooma campus during the winter term and the coastal based Nowra campus during the summer term.
Passport to the world of opportunities This career allows me to travel the world as people eat no matter where they are, said Chef Ben. For those who wish to pursue this path, he suggested that Australia is a place where the standard of training and education is high and chefs that are trained in Australia get jobs in Europe. Ben himself spent several years working overseas and, as a chef, he appreciates the usefulness of having an overseas experience which provides opportunities to learn new techniques, experience different cultures, as well as to express oneself in a different way. Having a world-class overseas cookery education enriched with practical training can therefore be a true passport to the world of opportunity.
