Page 11 - 顯理中學（第35期校訊）

Form 6 - My Day as a Chef

6C Choi Lap Yat - Champion

Greetings! It is a pleasure to be here and share my experience of being a chef for a day.

What is a restaurant to you? A place to eat and enjoy your feast? Of course it is, I thought the same way.
But after this experience, I had my eyes wide open, a restaurant is more than a place for eating.

Let’s stop beating the bush, it is not a usual experience for me to work in a kitchen. I still remember the
feeling of stepping out backstage. I was blown away. Piles of bowls and dishes, fire and flame, materials
and of course, the cooks and kitchen crew working there. It was far from what I imagined a kitchen would
look like. It isn’t like mommy cooking at home. Mommy doesn’t need to handle tens of hundreds of orders
a day and I don’t think mommy can take care of 5 stores at the same time. These people are not just
cooking, they are thriving in this steaming hot hell to bring satisfaction to the customers sitting outside.

Although I said I was a chef for a day, I didn’t do much other than just watching because I was not a
real chef after all and I was very surprised that I was offered a chance to have the real deal by myself
and experience the whole flow from getting orders to finishing the dish, with the help of fellow crews of
course. In the process, I’ve learnt a lot about how a kitchen works. For example, everyone has to move in
order and at the same direction to avoid collision and accidents since the kitchen is not a very big place
and there are “codes” and funny names for different dishes for waiters to easily call them out.

Other than the incredible “power” of the crews and the order of the kitchen, what I appreciate most is the
chef’s attitude and passion to their work. Unlike me, an outsider, fresh to everything about the kitchen
or cooking, these chefs have been working as a cook for years, ‘manufacturing’ the dishes. Yet they still
keep their passion and continue to serve customers with their whole heart and refined skills. My day as
a chef cannot compare with their days at work. But my way as a chef has definitely been inspired and
articulated after that day.

It truly was a good experience. I am able to see what a restaurant is in a whole new perspective. And I
can really learn a lot from the kitchen crew.

st
6E Li Hang Chun - 1 Runner-up

Good morning principal, teachers and fellow students. Today I would like to share with you my
experience as a chef. I work in a restaurant named “Dolce Soprano”. I am going to introduce
my daily routine, how we choose ingredients and our cuisine.

To begin, I start my day early in the morning at 6am. I have to pick up ingredients in the pantry
of my restaurant. The other chefs and I prepare and manage those ingredients. Then we
have to start making the elements and components of the dishes. After around five hours of
prep time, it will be around the time customers start streaming into the restaurant. They will
be guided to their seats while we plate up the food. Within twenty minutes, the waiters would
have picked up the food and served them to our waiting customers.

Next, our restaurant selects fresh, locally sourced and organic ingredients for our dishes and
garnishes. For instance, we use homegrown kale, asparagus and potatoes. To increase the
freshness and delicate tastes of our seafood dishes, we get our lobsters, clams and scallops
from the local wet market. When we are cooking, we use herbs to bring fragrance; The six
major herbs used in our restaurant are rosemary, thyme, basil, cardamom, fennel and vanilla.
Our major aim here is to bring fresh food and happiness to our customers. Good restaurants
have the obligation to delight customers by stimulating their palate, wowing them with the
presentation of the dishes, and providing a pleasant environment in which to enjoy the cuisine.
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