EDUCATION OF CHEFS

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21386, 31 January 1935, Page 8

EDUCATION OF CHEFS

♦ TRAINING SCHOOL ADVOCATED "COOKS DO NOT KNOW HOW TO COOK*' To improve the standard of meals served in New Zealand hotels, much of the criticism of which he accepts, a suggestion is advanced by Mr R. L. Wigley, managing director of the Mount Cook Tourist Company, that a training school should be established to teach chefs, their assistants, and waitresses, the best methods of preparing and serving meals.. He maintains that there are extremely few really good chefs in New Zealand, and for this he blames not so much the chefs themselves as the lack of training facilities for them. Mr Wigley's company controls two hotels, the Hermitage, Mount Cook, and the White Star Hotel, Queenstown. He said yesterday that the criticism of two notable French visitors whose remarks were reported in "The Press" some days ago, was in a large measure correct, and he also agreed to a great extent with the opinions later expressed by home science and cooking experts. He thought that the New Zealander's disinclination to taste new dishes was due to the chefs' lack of education, because if the chMs were able to teach the hotel guests the nature and value of various lessknown dishes, these would be better appreciated.

Lack of Knowledge The average so-calied cook was at a disadvantage, Mr Wigley said, in that he was not trained in (a) how to cook, (b) how to use foods economically, (c) how to please and educate the taste of the guests, (d) what foods should be used, in what combinations, in the interest of health, (e) how to carve joints, and (f) how to serve meals. Hotel workers were also at a great disadvantage when there were no means by which they could receive gaining. This was not given properly in hotels, and what was wanted was a special school to train all hotel staffs, incuding waitresses. Such a school could be controlled by the Hotel Employers' Association, together with the hotel employees' organisation. A good training school would give the students a far better standing and would help employers in providing better meals and thus giving a better service to the public. Hotel as a School His suggestion was that one hotel might be set aside to be conducted as a school. An organisation such as this would require to keep in close touch with an expert, such as Professor A. G. Strong, of the Home Science department at the Otago University. There might be a difficulty in getting the associations of employers and employees to combine in such a scheme. The hotel employees were well organised and would be more easily brought into the project, but the hotel employers were so badly organised that there would probably be difficulty in' getting them all to co-operate. "I am not making this criticism to belittle the hotel staffs, but in the hope that it may be constructive," Mr Wigley said, "for lam sure that the want of such an organisation as I have suggested is felt just as much by hotel employees as by the proprietors; and not only by the chefs but by their assistants and the waitresses."