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Smart Skills
Lots cooking here Earlier considered an unconventional career, food craft and culinary arts is now being accepted as a popular and sought-after career. From providing in-flight meals, to catering for private parties and social events, a career in the culinary arts is undergoing rapid growth, and offers dynamic opportunities for all those with a taste for food. Culinary arts is the training for preparing food for large numbers of people. It can also include specialisations in areas such as kitchen services, bakery and confectionary and food and beverage management. Kitchen services covers the training in food preparation. A chef learns to prepare food quickly and in quantity while working with others. Chefs also handle the costing of a dish, the nutritional composition, quality control, and menu. There are several levels in the hierarchy of chefs with the Commis Chef 1, 2 & 3 at the bottom, to the Executive Chefs at the top, responsible not only for all the food prepared in the hotel or restaurant, but also for training and hiring chefs, as well as business plans, budgets and food and beverage management.
Career progression Commis Chefs handle the major part of the cooking, and are responsible for the taste of a dish, with the right proportion of ingredients and spices, and presentation that would appeal to a customer. There are also Sous Chefs that act as a liaison between the executive chef and the kitchen team, and Chef-de-Partie that specialise in a particular cuisine. As you gain in experience, you can move up the hierarchy into supervisory and managerial appointments. Many hotels and restaurant chains also have a Corporate Chef or Director of Food who is at the highest position in the hierarchy. Here, the job involves planning and introducing new and innovative cuisines, and menus offered at different restaurants.
Platter of prospects You can also choose to specialise in food and beverage management handling the service of all food and beverage items in restaurants, hospitals, cruise ships, and banquet facilities. Here, you will need to be involved in the accounting, marketing and financial management of all the food prepared and the beverages serviced in the food outlet, as well in handling the staff, in human resource management and customer relations. Baking and pastry is another area of work specialising in the preparation of pastry and bakery products. This is a finely tuned expertise with due importance placed on fundamental pastry and bread-baking techniques, in addition to all-purpose baking, desserts, cake decoration, and pastry arts. Today, with the increasing popularity of beer bars, lounge bars and other exotic places of relaxation and drink, bartending has become an interesting and exciting career for young girls and boys. Bartending requires you to be knowledgeable about all the different kinds of alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and trains you in the skills of preparing and serving such drinks. You can become a bartender/ bar manager/ bar instructor/ beverage catering manager or you can open your own bar. Bartending is a lucrative job, which is always in demand, and portable worldwide. Most courses in culinary arts includes modules on wines and spirits, and is increasingly becoming a sought after programme.
Checking in An intensive culinary training programme with a diploma or a degree in Catering and Culinary Arts is essential to get a good start in this field. While there are few training institutes specifically for the culinary arts, most colleges offering the Bachelor of Hotel Management programme, include courses in culinary arts and food craft. Much of the training also includes internships with hotels and restaurants where you will learn while on the job. Some institutes offer diplomas, local as well as in collaboration with Swiss or American institutions, and some others offer specialised courses in food production, food and beverage service, bakery and confectionary, patisserie studies and F & B management. The basic eligibility for the 3- 4 year diploma/ degree course in Hotel Management, Catering Technology and Applied Nutrition is plus two. For admission to a food craft institute, the minimum eligibility requirement is to have passed the high school (Class X) examination. Selection to all courses is on the basis of merit in a qualifying exam. A group discussion and personal interview mostly follow the entrance test.
Skill set However, culinary arts is a highly specialised field which requires a keen interest and knowledge about food, as well as fine aesthetic and creative skills. Food is only appreciated and enjoyed when it not only tastes good, but look s good as well. In fact there are sophisticated training institutes abroad, for those wanting to specialise in such 'Haute Cuisine' or fine cooking. The Cordon Bleu Institute in France offers certification in this premium style of cuisine. Cornell University in USA, the Salzburg and Vienna Schools and institutes at Karlovy Vary and Marianske Lazne in the Czech Republic, are other well-known training institutes and among the most coveted in the world for specialist cuisines. After graduating from a culinary college, you have the option of joining a hotel chain — many of which run their own catering schools, or join specialty restaurants, fast-food joints, private clubs, airlines catering and cabin services, office catering services, hospitals, institutional and industrial catering, and tourism associations. … Cruise ships with their multi-cuisine restaurants and eateries also hire large numbers of chefs, and provide on ship training as well. Opening your own specialty restaurant can also be a good option and a great business! With a little experience chefs who turn entrepreneurs carry with them vast knowledge of customer tastes and preferences and also the knowledge of how to run a kitchen successfully. Such a restaurant has a distinct edge over competition. Many experienced chefs are also turning food writers and food critics, or another Sanjeev Kapoor! But enjoying food, and having an interest in cooking is not the only requirements to get into this growing field. You must also be practical, have initiative and the capacity to handle people and work with them in a team. You also need loads of stamina to work under pressure, because this is not a 9 to 5 job. At most times you will be working when others are enjoying themselves. With the huge shortage worldwide for chefs and those trained in culinary arts, there are good opportunities abroad too, in countries where tourism is growing. To fill their job vacancies in this field, countries like Canada and Australia also offer excellent training programmes which enable students to learn culinary skills, and then stay on to work in the hospitality industry. If you love to whip up a soufflé and have the appetite for the food business, this is a field with huge potential. The food service business is among the fastest growing with more people spending more money on food and drink than ever before. If you wish to taste success and cook up a fine career for yourself, the culinary arts is your best bet. And who knows, if you excel in your job you may even win the best international accolade a cook can receive, a 3-star rating by the Michelin Red Guide that researches the skills of cooks across the world and the quality of international cuisine.
Course clues Indian Institutes offering such courses include:
Welcom Group School of Hotel Management, Oberoi School of Hotel Management, Shamnath Marg, Delhi. National Council for Hotel Management Pusa Complex, New Delhi - 110012 Indian Institute of Hotel Management (Taj Group) Rauza Bagh, Aurangabad - 431001 Maharashtra The Goa Swiss Institute of Hotel Management, Lokhandwala Complex, Andheri (W), Mumbai - 53 The Indian Academy of Catering Technology and Culinary Arts, Hyderabad Delhi Institute of Hotel Management, Lajpat Nagar IV, New Delhi - 110024 Dina Institute of Hotel Management Studies, Model Colony Chaturshringi Road, Pune- 411016 Institute of Bar Operations & Management, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. Cidade de Goa School of Culinary Arts, Panaji, Goa. The writer is a noted
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Enjoy tossing a salad, decorating a cake or experimenting with a new exotic dish? If so, you can create your own recipe for success – with a career in the culinary arts. Today, with the boom in the number of hotels and eateries in the country, there is a huge shortage of chefs, and those qualified in culinary skills, baking, restaurant and pastry arts, and other related fields. According to the demand, analysts predict that the shortage in the culinary field is expected to reach 12 million in the next couple of years.
