Camilla Waite from Michelin-starred Paul Ainsworth

The Staff Canteen

Chef Career Advice

Based on her extensive experience working within the Culinary world, Chef de Partie, Camilla Waite offers her advice to aspiring Chefs in an attempt to help them on their journey up the career ladder:

The advice that I'd give someone that was about to start their career from college would be to decide what kind of food you like, where do you like eating and try and find a place to work which does that type of food. I think a young Chef should expect from our industry something quite different from how it's portrayed in boiling point and things that a lot of younger Chefs would see going on YouTube and things like that.

The best bit of advice I've ever been given about my career is just to do what I enjoy, that I don't have to become a stereotypical nasty Chef to do well. Anyone applying for a job I'd give them the advice to not just Email the company, phone up try and speak to someone and let them have a feeling of who you are and maybe arrange for if you can get a trial, maybe arrange for work experience to just show them what you’re made of because personally, I've had trouble before where I've tried to go for a job and they won't even look at my CV.

I found working here to be very nurturing and everyone explains everything a lot, there's not a lot of shouting so it’s not stressful, dropping things because you're freaking out. Learning a lot all the time, everything that goes on in a kitchen were all included, if there's a new dessert we all get to try it, we all get to talk about how it was created we all go away and come up with different ideas like looking to what we're doing and how it can influence with other flavours and all kinds of bits like that.

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The Staff Canteen

The Staff Canteen

Editor 8th September 2016

Camilla Waite from Michelin-starred Paul Ainsworth