Apprentice – Chef

Tonya Turner

She began her career making chicken curries and gammon steak hamburgers in a pub in the United Kingdom but apprentice chef Tess Carmody, 21, could not be further away from where it all began a few years ago while travelling.

Carmody, who has worked for the past 12 months at Brisbane’s premier organic restaurant, Mondo Organics, is relishing the chance to work with fresh, local and pesticide-free produce.
“I consider myself so lucky to be able to work with fantastic local organic produce and to work with it in season as well,” she says.
After getting a taste for life in the kitchen in the UK, Carmody returned to Australia and, last year, began an apprenticeship through Southbank Institute of Technology in the block-release program. It requires her to work full-time in a restaurant for 12 months before attending college for one month and repeating that for three years.
She could have opted for the day-release program, which involves working four days a week in a restaurant and attending college one day a week but an availability arose in the block-release program first.
“I think it is a better option because you’re there day after day so you can build on what you learnt the day before and build a greater rapport with those you are studying with. I haven’t done day-release but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t like it as much as block-release. I find that really fun – and it’s kind of a holiday from work as well.
“You go there 8am-5pm – which are dream hours when you’re doing an apprenticeship,” Carmody says.

Twelve-hour days are common in the restaurant world, with Carmody working about 55 hours a week from Tuesdays to Saturdays.
Moving from restaurant to restaurant is also common practice during an apprenticeship but Carmody is happy to stay just where she is for now.
“It’s an unwritten rule that you move around as an apprentice to try and get maybe a year of hotel experience, a year of fine dining, a year of bistro just so you’ve got a good skill base to work on but a lot of apprentices will start at the Hilton and finish at the Hilton and a lot will go through five or six restaurants because they can’t settle down. It depends on the restaurant and the training provided,” she says.

At Mondo Organics, Carmody gets to work across three areas – catering, restaurant service and cooking school.
On top of her long working hours, Carmody is completing a Bachelor of Business majoring in Public Relations with a French speciality part-time at Queensland University of Technology.

“I’m really interested in the catering side of the business. I’m hoping my degree will gear me towards cooking for corporate clients for PR functions and events as well as organisational elements,” she says.

“There are so many things you can do as a chef. That’s my grand plan — to garner some really fantastic experience in good-quality food and then try and use that as a vehicle for food and wine companies to promote Queensland produce through events and festivals.”

Spending Sundays studying and Mondays at university, Carmody is determined to see her plan through.
“It’s tough. It’s a lot of work. You come home really late at night with new burns and new scars and a bit of a bruised ego sometimes. You’re always doing something wrong and I suppose that’s part of learning. It’s really hard but really rewarding at the same time,” she says.
Passing on knife skills
Tess Carmody enjoys the role reversal of working for the Mondo Organics cooking school.

“Its’ a little bit empowering I suppose. You don’t realise how much you’re learning from your chefs and from college but then, when you can impart things that people don’t know about, it’s really empowering,” she says.

Her job at the cooking school is to ensure the room is set up, to get the recipes together and weigh out the ingredients.
“When the cooking students come in, I help the chefs by coaching people one-on-one – maybe giving them a few knife skills or giving them some tips on boning out meat and giving them tips from the industry that a lot of people don’t know about.
“All the theory is still quite fresh in my mind because of college so I’m able to pass that on.”