Career advice from Sat Bains at Restaurant Sat Bains

The Staff Canteen

Chef Career Advice

Based on his extensive experience working within the Culinary Industry, Michelin star Chef, Sat Bains offers his advice to aspiring Chefs in an attempt to help them on their journey up the career ladder:

The advice we normally give and I think it stands the test of time is it's going to be very hard work. Perseverance and look at small challenges as gains, so if you're working in a kitchen or you're wanting to get into a kitchen have a look at the menu, see where you want to work, which one appeals to you which is your style? Where are you going to learn that most skills are the fundamentals? Some are quite busy so you’re going to be doing a lot of preparation and that's obviously going to harden your hands and all the rest of it.

So it's really a case of working in a good environment, a busy environment but it's about getting that workload through so your body gets used to it because I think that will always be a shock for guys coming into the industry that are not used to working these hours.

I think young Chefs from the industry today can expect a great career and again the successes come later. You normally have to put aside 10 years of your early life as just graft.

The best bit of advice I was ever given was by a chap called Madoc Bellamy and he actually said to me when I was a younger Chef I was 24/25 sorry I was younger I was 22. He said give yourself a fiver and a 10 year plan. Where would you like to be in 5/10 years?

When someone comes here for a job the first thing you're looking for is passion and motivation, someone that's really obsessed with food. Skill set not necessarily high on the agenda but they do need to know certain aspects of the basics.

I think a young Chef walking into the restaurant here will have a lot of mentorship from the experience we got there going to be put into an environment that's very creative we do tasting menus only so you're seeing so much more food.

Find a Chef Job

Whether you're an aspiring Chef soon to be leaving education, or you are an established Chef looking for a new culinary challenge, we have a variety of Chef roles to suit you;
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The Staff Canteen

The Staff Canteen

Editor 20th April 2017

Career advice from Sat Bains at Restaurant Sat Bains