'Young Chefs Needs to Unlearn and Learn'

INDIAN CULINARY Forum (North India) and BW Hotelier presented the Fifth Chef Summit 2017 at Hotel Ashok, New Delhi on November 1, 2017. Several hospitality experts and young aspiring chefs came together under one roof to discuss upon ‘Making India a Global Culinary Destination’.

In the third panel discussion titled ‘The Human Touch: Skilling Up Raw Talent to Deliver World-Class F&B Services’ dignitaries all across the hospitality industry came forward to discuss the importance of training and sharing knowledge. On the dice were Jyoti Joshi, National Head Standard, Tourism and Hospitality Skill Council; Bakshish Dean, Executive Director, Prime Gourmet; Parvinder Bali, Corporate Chef, Learning and Development; Manisha Bhasin, Senior Executive Chef, ITC Maurya; Manmohan Singh, Restauranteur and Hospitality Consultant and Vinod Saini, Executive Chef, The Leela Palace Hotel, New Delhi. The session was moderated by Bikramjit Ray, Executive Editor, BW Hotelier.

Bhasin started the discussion by stating the need of providing proper training to the budding chefs. Ray further raised the question to Saini, asking his thoughts about skilling and about the shortfalls. Answering to that Saini replied, “It is very difficult to maintain the authenticity, the new generation are very fast moving and they do not really focus on the training period.”

Bali on the other hand believed that as a role of trainer there is a need to channelize the energy of young chefs to make them recognize the basic ingredients and making full use out of them. Bali also paid emphasis on the behavioural skills to work in an orderly manner.

The session ended with a note from Dean, “Kitchen is a space where one needs a lot of energy and it’s very important that young chefs need to unlearn and then learn,” he said.