5 Young Chefs
Young chefs are all the rage, but old-school is the only way to pass on skills. It has reached a point where nearly every chef Caterer Middle East talks to reminisces about the time when youngsters working in the F&B industry actually paid their dues, as compared to taking shortcuts up the ladder.
Orpwood says: “When we started in Dubai, it was quite difficult because we hired all the staff from here and my issue is that people move up the ranks really fast. You have general managers at 25 and they thought Dubai was the be-all-and-end-all — they had never worked anywhere else and they would focus more on the handbag hooks for tables rather than refrigeration of produce.”
Clague and Waddell say it’s not just a Dubai phenomenon; rather it’s a worldwide concern that’s filtering into the Middle East as well. Students graduating from hospitality school assume they will get a high ranking job and then get surprised when they don’t.
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Alternatively, our experts say, these young chefs find someone to pay them an exorbitant salary with a job title far beyond their years.
One of the common concerns echoed across the board was the inability of new chefs to carry out basic skills like deboning a chicken or filleting a fish.
Velvick points out that certain new techniques used in the kitchen, such as the water bath, takes the knowledge of cooking meat by yourself away. “There are so many young cooks today who are hot shots — who only know water bath, who do all the froths and foams but if you say, ‘the water bath’s gone wrong, cook it in the pan’, they don’t know what to do.” All chefs agreed that this is a problem.
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