French Chef

Stephanie Madison

Living and working in France would be on a wish list for many people — and that is where it would remain. For chef Helen Pratt, “reality” seemed more fantasy than fact after an 18-month stint at Chalet Montana in the French Alps.

Now the head chef at the Kingaroy Hotel, Ms Pratt has enjoyed telling hospitality students at the Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE the training she received was exactly what she needed to gain employment abroad. “In France, the qualifications are so different,” she said. “They usually only complete a two-year course before being considered a fully qualified chef, (while) in Australia, we study for four years,” Ms Pratt said.

“The feedback from my employer in France was that our skills are really valued and they bent over backwards to ensure we were enjoying our work and that we’d stay on. “It’s amazing to travel to different places and see just how much they know about food. Everyone (in France) from young people to grandmothers seemed to know about a hundred different ways just to use an artichoke,” she said.

Ms Pratt said the language barrier was not as challenging as she had expected. “Hospitality is such a portable industry and there are plenty of English-owned restaurants and bars which make it easier to work and learn in a foreign country,” she said.

Ms Pratt completed her Certificate II in Commercial Cookery at SQIT and started as a first-year apprentice without doing a pre-vocational course. The certificate course encompasses culinary subjects ranging from appetisers and salads, stocks and sauces to pastry cakes and yeast goods and theoretical classes on health, safety and security procedures and working in a socially diverse environment.

“I felt the course was a really good introduction to cookery and what I liked about it was being in the same boat as everyone else and being able to discuss things with people already in the industry,” Ms Pratt said.

“One of the best things about it was the test kitchen which had absolutely everything in it.” Ms Pratt’s hospitality experience has included working at several Brisbane restaurants such as Tables of Toowong, Baguette at Ascot and Rhubarb, Rhubarb at Wooloowin. SQIT hospitality teacher, Jason Ford said study level dictated what employment roles were available to those who had completed courses.

“For example, depending on qualification level, hospitality graduates can get jobs as kitchen hands, food and beverage attendants, apprentice chefs, work behind a bar or as a barista,” he said.
Mr Ford said there was a high employability rate among graduates and many were able to “pick and choose among jobs and the hours they wished to work”.

He said that, while other subjects including industrial relations were covered, the SQIT hospitality courses were very “hands-on”. Each campus had test kitchens and operated “real” restaurants in which graduates could work.

By Stephanie Madison, Courier Mail, July 8, 2006.