The Taste of Success for New Chefs Forum
Catering professionals, chefs in particular are being urged to join a new professional forum established to promote excellence in culinary expertise. The Chefs Forum is a new partnership backed by The Bournemouth and Poole College’s Academy of Service Industries and the former Rungis Club.
The Rungis Club was founded by Chris Lewis the Managing Director of Coastline Produce. He paid a visit to Rungis on the outskirts of Paris which is home to the most fantastic food markets in the world, where pretty much anything that Europeans enjoy eating is up for sale. He invited a select group of local chefs to join him and led them on a highly enjoyable fact finding tour exploring the bewildering choices available, while packing their heads with culinary inspiration. The Rungis Club clearly defined a role to promote catering excellence. Membership was mainly drawn from top chefs, including food academics such as David Boland who is Senior Lecturer in catering at Bournemouth & Poole College, and of course founder member Chris Lewis of Coastline Produce. Because of the close ties with the college an amalgamation of the Rungis Club into the Chefs Forum proved to be an excellent platform to promote excellence within the industry.
This exciting new forum was officially launched at a splendid luncheon hosted at The College’s prize-winning Escoffier Restaurant at the Lansdowne, Bournemouth, with a number of new members and guests getting together for networking.
Tony Taylor from the Academy of Service Industries at The College said, “Since being nominated as a Centre of Vocational Excellence in culinary skills by the Learning and Skills Council we have been looking at ways of further enhancing and developing professional networks with those in the hospitality and catering industry. To ensure the economic success of the region and to nurture fresh young talent we need to ensure that we are attracting trainee chefs into this industry, those with energy and creativity who will keep up the very best catering traditions and skills in the future. We feel this forum will be a powerful tool in bringing training providers, students and employers together.”
The College already enjoys a reputation for exemplary catering training but accepts that local chefs who are working in the industry can have a massive influence on the skills training agenda for the next generation. The Chefs Forum has set itself a mission to promote catering excellence, and to provide an arena for debate on topics of interest and concern to local chefs, plus of course that vital ingredient of having a good time, networking and socialising and adding value to the tough life of a chef!
New events are being booked into the calendar with other events also in the pipeline. If you would like to know more about membership of The Chefs Forum, please contact Julie Mottisfont on 01202 205114 or email crosswelld@bpc.ac.uk