By Julia Poole

What makes a good chef? A passion for cooking, artistic ability, lots of focus, willingness to work long hours and eagerness to learn. Trevor Bailey – the co-operative educational coordinator for the hospitality department at Red River College – recommends that students fresh out of culinary school work under a talented head chef at a good restaurant for three or four years to further develop the skills they learned in culinary school. Trevor does not recommend that people acquire head chef positions immediately upon graduating. In culinary school, regardless of how much previous cooking experience they have, students are taught everything from scratch. Students are taught the ‘language’ of cooking. Trevor says, “They learn introductory, advanced and specialty culinary skills which are designed to prepare students to meet the challenges of an increasingly sophisticated and demanding hospitality industry.” Students learn lab work and theory from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon (like a full time job). “Red River College [supplies] the entire industry with quality trained students,” Trevor says.

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