Andrew Whiffen. Andrew Whiffen.

Andrew Whiffen, Raffles Dubai

About Andrew
Andrew discovered his passion to cook at the age of seven and he has never wanted to be anything else but a Chef. He comes from a family of chefs - his father was one, his mother was a Master Baker, his brother is a Group Executive Chef and two of his sisters are qualified Chefs. This has been his lifelong passion and carrying on the family tradition as a chef is what he was destined to do and what he has done for over 27 years! Andrew began his journey at Bournemouth College in the United Kingdom where he completed a two year course which included a six month industrial placement at the Le Gavroche in London, owned and operated by the famous Roux Brothers. Andrew rejoined Le Gavroche / Roux Fine Dining as a Commis Chef when he finished college and he left nine and a half years later as a Senior Chef Tournant. Andrew then joined the Pemberton Princess Hotel in Barbados in 1994 where he was employed as Chef de Cuisine and where he was quickly promoted to Executive Sous Chef. In 1998, he joined the Lone Star Hotel and Restaurant in Barbados as Executive Chef / Director and he remained there for two years. In 2000, Andrew joined The Sandy Lane Hotel also in Barbados as Chef De Cuisine before moving back to the United Kingdom two years later. Once back in the UK, Andrew worked as Chef De Cuisine in The Durham OX in Warwickshire for nine months until he decided that the country pub business was not his passion. After this he moved to India to work for The Oberoi Rajvilas in Jaipur as Executive Chef for three years before being transferred to The Oberoi New Delhi in the same position. In January 2008, Andrew joined Raffles Dubai in his current role as Executive Chef.

Above and beyond the call of duty…
Andrew is very innovative, creative and brings to Raffles the ideal leadership qualities for an executive chef. He excels in his role on a daily basis in such a way that it has become part of his daily work ethic. Andrew continues to go above the call of duty for Raffles to ensure success not only with the culinary department but with other departments and customers of Raffles Dubai. For guests, Andrew is pleasant and extremely flexible and he and his team will go out of his way to make sure that any special requests – however large or small - are met. For VIP guests he will personally go out of his way to buy their children a small gift, or prepare the food that they enjoy so that they feel at ‘home’. These small personal touches make a significant difference to the guest experience and this is just one of the many things Andrew does above his call of duty for Raffles Dubai. Furthermore, Andrew personally responds to any negative guest feedback to find out how we could have made their stay better. An example of this is when we were receiving some poor breakfast comments – he wrote to each and every guest to find out how we could have made their meal more enjoyable and he used this feedback to enhance what we had on offer. As a result of this for the past four months we have received many positive comments, which have included being told that we now have the best breakfast selection in Dubai! Moreover, Andrew actively takes part in charity and green initiatives and encourages his team to follow suit. As such they have participated in bake sales to help raise money for Breast Cancer and Pancreatic Cancer Awareness by designing special cupcakes to be sold in the Malls.

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Testimonials for Andrew
“I have worked with Chef Andrew for the past three years in both capacities as EAM F&B and hotel manager. I have always admired his capability for initiating themes and driving them into realization, what he has done with the Queen’s Jubilee event, and the different themes of Raffles Roast portrayed a lot of creativity and the events turned out to be extremely popular with the Dubai residents. His creativity is coupled with astute financial acumen which brought great returns for the hotel both in terms of financial returns and guest satisfaction. He also shined in driving his team and developing them. Over the past three years I have seen more than 25 chefs promoted, one of them already an Executive Chef with the Leela Group and the other an Executive Sous Chef in Forte Abu Dhabi. His team always shined in culinary competitions and came back with numerous medals in addition to wining various awards with for Fire and Ice and Noble House. Andrew proved to be an indispensable asset to our executive team and definitely is a role model to a big number of our colleagues. Working with him is always been a pleasure.” Ayman Gharib, hotel manager.

“A few words to best describe Chef Andrew: an incredibly hard worker with lifelong experience, exceptional talent and outstanding interpersonal and motivational skills. He is extremely creative chef whose strong points are definitely in creating concepts, analyzing problems and finding solutions. Chef is a self-motivated person whose financial knowledge and understanding of the business paired with very high work ethics is huge asset for the hotel and the company. One of Chef’s main focuses has always been nurturing and developing talent, taking the cooks to the next level. Some joined four years ago as a commis 3 and now rule their own mini kingdoms as Junior Sous Chefs. He does this by ‘back to basics’ training, identifying strengths, developing the weaknesses and slowly giving out responsibility. He has got full support of his team and the fact very large proportion of his team has stayed with him for three or more years shows that. Chef’s kitchen really is like a school on how to become a chef, you have talent, you are dedicated and perform well, and you will reach your goal. One of the team described Chef Andrew as a ‘good human’; he is someone people from all departments come for honest and direct advice. He is always open to new ideas and with him you are allowed to bring up and discuss your thoughts. He will guide you and in a professional and he is always willing to share what he has learnt over the years. The youngest of the cooks can come to him for career advice or recipes and if the same commis is still not able to execute the dish Chef will come and show him how to do it.” The Raffles kitchen team.