Culinary Academy: Pre-Course Preparation Guide
Quality. Delivered. Together.
Welcome to Culinary Academy. We are looking forward to having you in the kitchen.
Whether you are coming from a private cooking background, a professional kitchen, or a season of host work onboard, this week is built to take you from competent to confident at chef level in real working environments. Culinary Academy is intense, hands-on, and unrelenting. Your instructor will push you, the kitchen does not wait, and the crew you cook with becomes a big part of the experience.
How well you prepare in the weeks leading up to the course will shape how much you take from it more than anything else. Other schools run twelve-week programmes to build the same foundations. We give you one week of intensive practice with working private chefs. The trade is explicit: the more you arrive with already in your hands (knife work, the basic sauces, a working sense of flavour, comfort with timing), the more time we spend lifting you toward private chef standards rather than catching up on fundamentals.
Read this guide slowly. Read it twice. Practise the homework. By the time you arrive, you should feel ready to focus on the cooking itself, not the noise around it.
At Quarterdeck we live by a simple motto: Quality. Delivered. Together. That mindset starts here, before you even leave home.
See you in the kitchen.
The Quarterdeck Team
The week at a glance
Saturday: Course starts. Arrive at the check-in time confirmed by email. Welcome briefing, framework lecture, provisioning, and first cooking.
Fort George (Croatia): shared apartment accommodation included from Saturday night.
BVI and Greece: onboard the yacht from Saturday afternoon. If travelling from far, consider arriving Friday evening at your own cost.
Sunday to Thursday: Three full guest-style services per day (breakfast, lunch, dinner). Roles rotate. Pace builds through the week.
Thursday: Trial-day rehearsal. Each student gets an individual brief and delivers a service end to end, with the instructor watching as the hiring chef would. Following
Friday: Course ends Friday evening. Plan your return travel for Friday evening or Saturday morning. Specific kitchen address, accommodation suggestions, transfer details and any week-specific notes are sent by email before you fly and confirmed in your WhatsApp crew group.
Part I: Getting Ready
1. About Culinary Academy
Culinary Academy is a seven-day intensive cooking course. We deliver the same format at every destination we run, in three kinds of environments: yacht galleys, villa kitchens, and professional land-based kitchens.
Each course is led by an instructor with extensive experience as a private chef on luxury yachts and in villas. Groups are small: roughly four to five students per instructor. Across the week you will cook three full guest-style services per day, every day, for the whole week. By Friday you will have cooked twenty-one services. That is the point.
Culinary Academy is the level above Host Academy. Host Academy teaches you to run guest hospitality on a yacht, including the cooking that goes with it. Culinary Academy teaches you to deliver private chef food in real working environments, ready to step into the galley of a luxury yacht, the kitchen of a villa, or a serious chalet operation.
If you are booked for Fort George (Vis, Croatia): The kitchen there is a restaurant kitchen, not a yacht galley, and you stay in island accommodation for the week. What Fort George does not give you in authentic yacht-galley constraints (heel, motion, single oven, tight stowage), it gives back in food prep quality. Expect a slightly heavier emphasis on kitchen technique and finish. The principles and home practice in this guide apply unchanged; only the kitchen environment differs.
The objectives of the week
Over the seven days we work on five core areas:
- The grammar of cooking: the five tastes, texture, temperature, aroma, and the four levers (heat, salt, acid, fat). How to compose a dish that feels finished.
- The backbone: stocks, mother sauces, emulsions, doughs, slow-cooks for collagen. Master five of these and the rest of cooking gets faster, cheaper, and more consistent.
- Service flow at pace: three meals a day, on time, plated, every day, with curveballs.
- Dietary fluency: V, VE, GF, DF, pesc, nut-free, allergies, treated as the equal of any other plate, not as the boring option.
- Cooking with what is in front of you: limited supply, day-fresh produce, local ingredients, small stores. The magician’s eye.
Pro tip: Read this guide once end to end. Then read it again with a notebook open. Write down anything you do not understand, every dish you have not cooked, every technique you want to nail before you arrive, Curiosity is the single biggest predictor of how much you will learn this week.
2. Why Are You Here?
Culinary Academy welcomes a wide range of cooks. In any given week the kitchen might include someone fresh out of a private cooking diploma, an experienced restaurant cook moving into private chef work, a host coming back to level up after a season onboard, and someone with no professional background but a deep love of cooking at home. Mixed crews learn faster, because everyone teaches everyone.
Your application, CV, and prior experience reach your instructor before the course starts. They will already have a picture of where you are strongest, where you need work, and what you said you want from the week. You do not need to re-establish that on Day 1.
What we cannot know in advance is whether anything has changed since you applied. Tell us. Update your profile and add the details to your experience section before you arrive.
Cooking for a living
This is the right purpose if you want to work as a private chef on yachts, in villas, in chalets, or in restaurants demanding a high standard. Completing Culinary Academy does not, by itself, qualify you to work as a private chef. The course builds the craft and the systems. What opens the door after that is your portfolio, your references, and your performance during the course itself. Quarterdeck places students who finish strong; a pass alone is not the trigger, the bar is the standard you cooked all week.
Cooking at a higher level for yourself
Plenty of students join without any intention of working as a chef. They love cooking and want to take it further: the second house in the south, the ski chalet, big family weekends, dinner parties where you actually want to enjoy the meal. The course and the standard are the same regardless of your purpose.
If anything has changed: Update your profile and add the detail to your experience section. We compile this into a student summary your instructor reads before you arrive.
3. What to Expect: A Week of Real-Service Cooking
The pace builds through the week: foundations and provisioning on Day 1, real services from Day 2, an instructor-graded trial-day rehearsal on Thursday, showcase brunch on Friday.
Day 1, Saturday: arrival, welcome, framework, provisioning, first service
Arrive at the course location at the check-in time confirmed by email. Fort George students check into the shared apartments in Vis (included from Saturday night). BVI and Greece students board the yacht from Saturday afternoon.
On yacht-based courses, Saturday is shaped around the charter cycle: the previous week’s charter checks out, the yacht is cleaned and turned around, and we are released onto it from 15:00 to 16:00. The morning and early afternoon are spent ashore on theory, menu planning and provisioning.
Morning: framework lecture on the five tastes, the four levers (heat, salt, acid, fat), the five finishers, knife refresh, mise en place principles, and recipe and technique cards.
Mid-morning: walk through the week’s menus together so you arrive at the supermarket knowing what you are buying and why.
Lunch ashore (light, sit-down).
Afternoon: long provisioning trip with the instructor. Real shop, real budget, walk-through of choices, prices and seasonal swap thinking.
Late afternoon: stowing the galley together. This is teaching, not just logistics: where every item lives, why, and how to find it under motion.
Skipper introduction: each yacht has a dedicated skipper for the week. You work alongside them through the week; the dynamic between galley, helm and guest service is part of what we drill.
Evening: first cooking onboard. The instructor leads dinner, you assist.
Day 2, Sunday: backbone day
Stocks, mother sauces, emulsions and doughs. One chicken stock becomes a soup, a risotto, a velouté. One bread dough becomes focaccia, flatbread, pizza, dinner rolls. Two emulsions anchor the day. Three full services for the crew.
Day 3, Monday: composition day
Balance and contrast. Take a single ingredient and dress it five different ways. Taste them side by side. Three services with composition feedback at every plate-up.
Day 4, Tuesday: slow and fast
Collagen-rich slow cooks running through the day (lamb shoulder, beef short rib, pork belly). Pan technique drills (sear, rest, deglaze, monter au beurre). Pan sauces from drippings. Three services anchored by the day’s slow-cook.
Day 5, Wednesday: magician day
The instructor sets a constrained ingredient list mimicking a small local market. You plan and cook three services from what is there. Dietary curveballs woven through. The lesson is the way of thinking that lets you walk into any kitchen and produce great food from what is in front of you.
Day 6, Thursday: trial-day rehearsal and signature plate
Every student gets an individual brief in the morning: number of guests, dietaries, budget, time to deliver. Three to four hours to plan, prep, and deliver lunch with the instructor watching as the hiring chef would. Detailed feedback after. In the evening, each student plates their signature dish for the table.
Cooking under motion (yacht-based courses)
On yacht-based courses, cooking continues underway. This is part of the training: trimming a sauce while the yacht heels, plating a dish without sliding garnishes, putting knives down the second they leave the board. By Friday you forget you ever cooked any other way.
Day 7, Friday: showcase brunch, debrief, certificates (course ends Friday evening)
Final showcase brunch combining the week’s strongest moments. Kitchen clean and check-out. Individual debrief with your instructor: what you did well, what to work on, and (for the placement track, performance permitting) a CV and chef profile review with concrete next steps. Certificates issued to those who pass.
Pro tip: Bring a small notebook to every service. Write three lines every evening: one thing I learned today, one thing I want to do better tomorrow, one question to ask my instructor. The students who do this finish the week with a personal playbook that is more useful than any recipe binder.
4. Kitchen Life and Crew Etiquette
The crews that have the best week are not the most experienced. They are the ones with the cleanest habits.
Clean kitchen, fast kitchen
Surfaces wiped between tasks. Knives wiped and put back. Boards stacked. Pans straight to the wash. The cook who keeps their station tidy through a four-hour service is the cook who has time to plate cleanly when the timer goes.
Mise en place is everyone's job
Every student sets up their station before service. Every station gets checked before the kitchen goes hot. If you are ahead of your prep, you help the cook next to you. The crew finishes service when the last pan is clean, not when your station is.
Working with the rest of the crew
Communication is constant and verbal. “Behind!” when you walk behind someone with a hot pan. “Hot!” when you set something down. “Heard!” when someone calls a time. Silence is not focus; silence is a hazard.
Provisioning together
Saturday afternoon is provisioning. Everyone helps plan, shop and stow. Speak up if there are things you do not eat or things you really want to cook with during the week. If anything has changed from your application, email us at info@quarterdeck.co before you fly.
Following the head chef
Your instructor is the head chef. On safety, hygiene and timing they have the final word. On creative and technique decisions they will explain, debate and teach. If you are ever told to do something urgently and without explanation, do it first and ask why later.
5. Food Safety and Hygiene
Cooking for guests in a yacht galley in summer heat or a villa kitchen in a remote location raises the bar on food safety.
Temperature control
Fridges at 4 degrees Celsius or below. Freezers at minus 18. Hot food held above 63 degrees until service. Cooked food cooled fast (room temperature within an hour, fridge within two). Once cooked food has been out at room temperature for service, it is not going back in the fridge.
Cross-contamination
Separate boards and knives for raw protein, cooked protein, vegetables, fish and dairy. Wash hands between tasks, and always after handling raw protein. Tasting spoons are single-use: never go back into the pot with the same spoon.
Allergies and dietaries
A guest with an allergy is not a difficult guest. A poorly handled allergy is a serious incident. All allergens flagged at provisioning, written on the prep list, and called out in service. Cross-contamination protocol for severe allergies: dedicated boards, dedicated tools, plate served first. Free-from plates should look as good as anything else on the table.
Personal hygiene
Hair tied back. Nails short and clean. Apron on at the start of service, off when you leave the kitchen. If your stomach is unwell, tell the head chef immediately and step out. There is no negotiation on this.
6. What to Bring
Pack Practical, not pretty. The kitchen is a working kitchen, not a stage.
Knife kit
One chef’s knife (20 to 25 cm) you know the feel of, sharpened before you fly. One paring knife. Optional: one boning or filleting knife. Knife guards or a knife roll (loose blades in luggage cause problems at security and accidents at the bench). A small honing steel.
Workwear
Two or three plain chef jackets or plain white t-shirts. Two pairs of black or chef-pattern trousers. One apron (a second is wise). One pair of closed-toe non-slip kitchen shoes you can stand in for ten hours. Two side towels minimum.
Documents and admin
Passport (valid at least 6 months beyond your travel dates), travel insurance, any visa documentation, a printout of your booking confirmation and emergency contacts.
Personal
Personal medications in original packaging, sun protection for outdoor villa or marina locations, a reusable water bottle, a small notebook and pen (bring it every day, every service), and a phone with at least 5 GB of free storage. You will photograph plates throughout the week.
For the placement track
An up-to-date CV (printed and digital) that your instructor can review and tighten midweek. A draft chef profile (one-page bio: who you are, where you have cooked, what you cook well, the role you are looking for, two references). A short written answer to: “What kind of chef role do I want next, and why?” Two paragraphs. Read it back to yourself before you fly.
7. Mindset, Fitness and Cooking Pace
Culinary Academy is physical. You will be on your feet for ten to fourteen hours a day, in heat, with very few breaks.
Physical condition
Expect to be standing all day, often in front of heat. You will lift stockpots, carry crates, and move fast. If you can comfortably stand for several hours and lift a 15-kilo crate, you are in fine shape.
Sleep, food and water
Sleep will be tighter and shorter than at home some nights: bank some rest in the days before. Heat and cooking dehydrate you fast: two litres of water minimum, on top of any coffee. The cook who skips breakfast burns out by Wednesday.
Mental approach
You will burn something. You will plate one short. You will run late on a sauce. Every single student does. The students who get the most from the week share three traits: curiosity (they ask, all week, even when they think they know), humility (they take feedback as a gift, not a wound), and composure (they recover from mistakes calmly and do not blame the oven, the heat, or each other).
Pace and recovery
The kitchen does not pause. The trick is not to push harder; it is to stay smooth. Smooth is fast. Panic is slow. When something goes wrong, the next move is always: take a breath, look at the time, look at the prep list, decide one action, do it.
Part II: Culinary Foundations
8. Pro Kitchen Vocabulary
Spending an hour with the list below before you arrive will save you hours of confusion in the first 48 hours of the course.
Core actions
- Mise en place ("everything in its place"): the set-up done before service starts; the difference between a calm cook and a panicked one.
- Sweat: cook gently in fat over low heat, no colour, to soften and release moisture (onions, leeks, garlic).
- Sear: hot pan, dry surface, hard contact. Builds the Maillard layer that flavours the dish.
- Deglaze: splash liquid (wine, stock, water) into a hot pan after searing to lift the fond into a sauce.
- Reduce: simmer a liquid down to concentrate flavour and thicken texture.
- Monter au beurre: finish a sauce by whisking in cold butter off the heat, for shine and body..
- Emulsify: combine two things that do not naturally mix (oil and water, fat and acid) into a stable third thing (vinaigrette, hollandaise, mayonnaise).
- Brunoise / julienne / chiffonade: fine cubes / matchsticks / fine ribbons. Knife discipline that makes plating uniform.
- Confit: cook slowly submerged in fat at low temperature, for tenderness and preservation.
- Blanch and shock: brief boil followed by ice bath; sets colour, halts cooking.
- Rest: leave protein off the heat for a minute or two before slicing, so juices redistribute.
Components and Finishes
- Stock: aromatic liquid pulled from bones, trim and aromatics. The base of soups, sauces, and risotto.
- Jus: a pan-drippings sauce reduced to nappant (coats the back of a spoon).
- Beurre blanc: classic emulsion of white wine reduction, cream and butter.
- Hollandaise: warm emulsion of egg yolk, lemon and butter.
- Vinaigrette: cold emulsion of oil and acid, plus seasoning and emulsifier (mustard, honey, egg).
- Gremolata: chopped herb plus citrus zest plus garlic. The cheapest plate-lifter in the kitchen.
- Crumb: toasted breadcrumbs (pangrattato), nuts, seeds. Adds crunch.
- Quick pickle: vegetable steeped in vinegar, sugar and salt for 30 minutes to days. Acid plus crunch in one move.
Service language
- Service: the active period when food is going out to guests.
- The pass: the bench where plates leave the kitchen for the table. The chef at the pass calls every plate.
- Brief / debrief: the meeting before / after a service.
- Plate-up: the final assembly of a dish before it goes out.
- Cover: one guest. "How many covers?" means "how many guests?".
- All day: the running total of an item across all tickets.
- On the fly: needed now, immediately.
- 86: The kitchen has run out of a dish.
9. Mise en Place: The Foundation Skill
Mise en place is not a set of recipes. It is a state of mind. The cook who lives by mise is calm, fast and consistent. The cook who does not is improvising under pressure, slowly.
What it actually means
Mise en place is everything you set up before a single guest sits down. Vegetables prepped and labelled. Sauces made and warm. Proteins portioned. Pans staged. Garnishes ready. Salt, pepper, oil, lemon and a stack of clean side towels within arm’s reach. When mise is done, service is mostly assembly.
The prep list is a contract
Before any service you write a prep list: every task, in order, with estimated time and oven schedule. Tick as you go. Five things on a list will take longer than your gut tells you. The list does not lie.
Your station
Set up the same way every time. Knife, board, towel, oil, salt, pepper, tasting spoons, bin within reach. A bowl for trim. A small water spray or wet cloth for cleaning the board. The first ten minutes of any service are spent on the station, and they are the most valuable ten minutes of your day.
Pre-arrival drill: Pick three dishes you would serve at a small dinner party. Write a prep list with timings to a 19:30 service. Cook them on a Sunday afternoon for friends, family, or just yourself. Note where the list got it wrong. Adjust. Run it again the following weekend. By the third try the list and the clock are friends.
10. The Palette of Thinking: How to Compose a Dish
Cooking by recipe gets you through a service. Cooking by composition gets you through a season as a private chef, with whatever the market gave you and whatever the guests asked for in the morning.
The five tastes
Sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami. Every plate touches at least three of the five. A fish dish without acid feels flat. A dessert without salt feels one-note. Building a balanced plate is, more often than not, asking which of the five is missing and adding it last.
The other axes
Texture: crunchy, creamy, soft, chewy, crisp, tender, brittle. Pair opposites on the plate.
Temperature: hot, warm, room, cool, cold. A cold cream on a hot pie. A warm protein on a cool salad. The contrast wakes the palate.
Aroma: herb, spice, char, smoke. The thing the guest smells before they taste. Fresh herb at the pass is the single biggest cheap win.
Colour: visual contrast carries the plate before the fork is up. A plate of three colours feels intentional; a plate of one colour feels missing.
The four levers (heat, salt, acid, fat)
Heat builds browning and depth. Salt brings every flavour forward. Acid lifts heavy or rich food off the palate. Fat carries flavour and creates a body. The cook who can taste a dish and reach for the right lever without thinking is what we are working towards.
The five finishers
At the pass, before the plate leaves the kitchen, ask: do I have acid, salt, fat, fresh herb, crunch? If something feels unfinished, one of those five is missing. A squeeze of lemon. A flake of salt. A drizzle of good oil. A scatter of parsley. A spoon of toasted crumb.
Composition logic
Balance: hit at least three of the five tastes plus one textural contrast on every plate.
Contrast: pair opposites deliberately (creamy and crunchy, sweet and sour, hot and cold, rich and bright).
Echo: repeat one element subtly across the plate (lemon zest in the dressing and a wedge of lemon at the side, dill in the cure and dill fronds at the pass). Echo creates intention.
Pre-arrival drill: Pick one ingredient (a tomato, a roasted carrot, a piece of grilled fish). Plate it five different ways across one week, hitting different tastes and textures each time. Photograph each version. Note which felt finished and which felt unfinished. By the fifth version your hand starts to reach for the right finisher without thinking.
11. Knife Skills (Junior Refresh)
We assume you arrive with junior knife skills already in place. This is a refresher and a list of what to drill in the weeks before you fly, not a beginner’s guide. The course will not spend long on knife basics; we expect you to have them.
The grip and the guide
Pinch grip on the knife, just forward of the handle. Guide hand claw-shaped, knuckles forward, fingertips back. The blade rides against the knuckles. The hand that gets cut is the hand that flattens out.
The four cuts to drill
- Slice (paysanne / rondelle): even, thin, fast.
- Dice (small, medium, large): equal in size on every face.
- Brunoise: fine 3mm dice. The hardest of the four. Slow, accurate, uniform.
- Julienne / chiffonade: fine matchsticks (vegetables) or ribbons (herbs).
Sharpening and honing
A blunt knife is a slow knife and a dangerous knife. Hone before every service (steel rod, ten passes each side, light pressure). Sharpen on a stone every two to four weeks. If you have never sharpened, ask your instructor on Day 1.
12. Stocks, Sauces and the Backbone
The backbone is the small set of foundational components a working chef leans on every day. Master five and the rest of cooking gets faster, cheaper and more consistent.
Stocks
Chicken, vegetable, fish, brown beef. Made from bones, trim and aromatics. Simmered slowly, never boiled. Strained, cooled, labelled. Frozen in clear-portioned containers. A litre of fresh stock makes the difference between a flat sauce and a finished one.
Mother sauces and emulsions
Bechamel (milk and roux; base of gratin, lasagne, soufflé), velouté (stock and roux; a thousand variations), espagnole or jus (brown stock reduced; the serious red sauce family), tomato (long-simmered, garlic, herb and time; basis for ragù, shakshuka, sugo), hollandaise (yolk, lemon, butter; warm emulsion), beurre blanc (white wine and shallot reduction, cream, cold butter mounted off heat; best with fish), vinaigrette (oil, acid, mustard, seasoning; cold emulsion; the foundation of every salad and dressing variation), mayonnaise (yolk, oil, acid, salt; base for aioli, tartare, remoulade).
Bread and dough
One enriched dough can become focaccia, pizza, flatbread, dinner rolls, brioche buns. Bread is where many private chefs separate themselves from cooks; warm bread to the table changes a meal.
Slow-cooks and collagen
Tough cuts, low temperature, time. Lamb shoulder, pork belly, beef short rib, ossobuco, chicken thigh, oxtail. Long cooking extracts collagen into gelatin, giving sauces body and meat tenderness without thickeners. A pot on the stove from morning to evening is the cheapest insurance policy in a working kitchen.
Pickles, ferments and preserves
Quick pickles (red onion, cucumber, fennel) take fifteen minutes and lift any plate. Compotes and chutneys hold for weeks and turn leftovers into garnish. Salt-cured herbs and citrus zest extend the season.
Dressings, marinades, brines and oils
Five vinaigrettes, three marinades, two brines, two herb oils. With those eleven things in the fridge, a chef can dress, marinate, brine and finish almost anything that arrives that morning.
13. The Magician Mindset: Cooking with What You Find
Private chefs on yachts and in villas do not work from a stocked restaurant pantry. They work from what is in the small market that morning, what landed at the harbour, what the local farm sent, what the guests requested late last night. The best of them treat that constraint as creative fuel, not a limitation.
The mindset shift
Stop asking “what is the recipe?”. Start asking “what do I have, what do these guests want, what does this turn into in two hours?”. The recipe is the ingredient list. The dish is what you make of it.
The market shop
Walk the whole market before you buy. Look at what is fresh, abundant, cheap and what looks tired. Shop around the things at their best. Two beautiful tomatoes do more for a plate than a sad punnet of strawberries flown in for the wrong season.
The dish equation
A workable plate is rarely more than four moving parts: a protein (or hero ingredient), a starch or grain, a vegetable, a sauce. Add the five finishers (acid, salt, fat, fresh herb, crunch). That frame fits almost any cuisine, almost any dietary, almost any kitchen.
Substitution and Swap Thinking
When the brief is “vegan dinner for six, gluten-free, on a yacht in a small port with no oat milk”, the instinct must be to think in roles, not ingredients. What plays the role of richness? What plays the role of bite? What plays the role of acid? With those three answers in hand, the dish builds itself.
Crew Meals and Waste
A working chef cooks three guest services a day plus a fourth meal for the crew. Crew meals are where waste is recovered: trimmings, leftovers, the slow-cook from yesterday turned into ramen tonight. The chef who can do this builds a reputation; the chef who cannot loses budget.
Part III: Service Operations
14. The Three-Meal Day: Service Flow Under Pressure
From Day 2 onwards the kitchen runs three full services a day. The structure of the day is the same every day; the menus, dietaries and constraints flex around it. By Friday the rhythm is in your hands.
Anatomy of a day
- Early morning: quiet kitchen, brief prep for breakfast, coffee on, read the prep list once before you touch a pan.
- Breakfast service: fast, often plated to order. Eggs done well. Bread and pastries are warm. Fresh fruit on the table. Yogurt, granola, options for any diet that came up overnight.
- Mid-morning: clean down, reset, brief on the day, provisioning decisions if there is a top-up.
- Lunch prep: the simplest service of the day to plan, often the easiest to skimp. Resist. Lunch is where you build trust.
- Lunch service: composed plates or family-style platters; bread warm, a bright sauce, something cold to drink.
- Afternoon: clean down, crew meal if one is needed, begin dinner mise en place. Slow-cooks already started in the morning come into focus.
- Dinner prep: the serious service. Sauces tasted and corrected. Garnishes ready. Plate map drawn. Oven schedule confirmed.
- Dinner service: pace at the pass. Plates leave together. Calm voices. Clean stations.
- Late evening: kitchen down, trash out, surfaces wiped. Tomorrow's prep list is written before you sit down. The cook who writes the list at night is the cook who sleeps.
The prep list as contract
Every service starts with a written list: tasks in order, time estimates per task, oven schedule, plate map. The cook who skips the list saves five minutes at the start and loses thirty minutes at the pass.
Recovery from mistakes
Pro chefs do not stop making mistakes. They get faster at recovering. When something goes wrong, the move is always the same: take a breath, look at the time, look at the prep list, decide one action, do it. Then debrief after, not during.
Plate consistency
Three plates of the same dish should look the same. Not roughly, exactly. Same volume of sauce, same number of garnish leaves, same angle, same height. Drill plate maps in your prep. Take a photograph of the first plate at every service and match every plate after that to the photo.
The debrief
After every service: ten minutes, sit down, three questions. What went well, what went wrong, what one thing do we change tomorrow. The debrief is where the week’s learning compounds.
Part IV: Stretch and Final Prep
15. Towards Private Chef Standards
Culinary Academy is a serious foundation. It is not the end of the road, even for students who finish strong.
The gap from this course to a working chef
Volume: a guest week is seven days of three services, often for more covers than the course rehearses. Stamina is its own skill.
Menu literacy: a working chef holds two or three weeks of menus in their head, with substitutions ready, and can rebuild any of them around a dietary curveball.
Provisioning relationships: knowing the suppliers in your region, what they can get, what is in season, when to buy, when to wait.
Guest-facing presence: briefing menus warmly, holding a calm tone when something runs late, taking feedback gracefully when it is given at the table.
Cost discipline: a chef who cooks beautifully but blows the budget loses the contract.
The trial day
The standard way private chefs are hired is trial day. The client gives you a brief: number of guests, dietaries, budget, kitchen description, meals required. You shop, prep and deliver. The hiring chef or owner watches. Most chefs win or lose the job within three hours.
Thursday of the course rehearses this exactly.
The placement track and the network
Two things drive a placement introduction: you pass the course, and you cook at a standard the instructor is willing to put their name behind. Steady, calm, consistent service across all seven days is what builds a reference. If both are true, the Friday debrief becomes a placement conversation.
CV and chef profile review
If you are tracking placement, your instructor reviews your CV and draft chef profile midweek. Bring both with you (see Section 6).
16. Apps and Tools to Set Up Before You Arrive
Essential
- A notes or list app you trust (Apple Notes, Google Keep, Notion, or paper).
- A scale and conversion app or built-in calculator (conversion done wrong is a sauce broken).
- A timer with multiple parallel timers.
- WhatsApp (your crew group will form here).
Recommended
- Pinterest or Instagram (build a small board of plating, presentation and cuisines you admire; the instructor uses this to calibrate your taste).
- A photo app you can label and organise (at least 5 GB free for the week).
- A receipt scanner if you tend to lose receipts (keep all provisioning receipts; budget literacy is part of the role).
Phone admin
Confirm your phone works at your destination. Test you can make calls before you fly. At least 5 GB of free phone storage for the week’s photos. Bring at least one power bank and a USB cable.
17. Final Checklist Before You Travel
Print this page. Tick each item. Do not pack until everything below is true.
Documents
- Passport, valid at least 6 months beyond the end of your trip
- Travel insurance
- Visa documentation if applicable
- CV, printed and digital
- Draft chef profile (for the placement track)Draft chef profile (for the placement track)
Travel
- Flights to the correct airport (sent by email)
- Buffer built in: always book to arrive on Saturday morning at the latest; if travelling from far or using connecting flights, arrive on Friday evening
- Transfer to the course location planned
- Accommodation confirmed: Fort George students in shared apartments in Vis (included); BVI and Greece students onboard the yacht
- If arriving Friday evening: one night nearby booked at your own cost
- Return travel booked for Friday evening or Saturday morning (booking earlier than Friday afternoon means missing the final debrief)
Knife kit, workwear and tools
- Chef's knife sharpened
- Paring knife packed
- Boning or filleting knife (optional)
- Knife guards or knife roll
- Honing steel
- Plain chef jackets or t-shirts
- Black or chef-pattern trousers
- Apron (two if possible)
- Two side towels minimum
- Closed-toe non-slip kitchen shoes
Apps and personal
- Notes or list app installed
- Conversion calculator or scale app installed
- Timer app with multiple parallel timers installed
- WhatsApp working internationally
- Phone with at least 5 GB free storage
- Power bank charged, USB cable packed
- Notebook and pen
- Reusable water bottle
- Sun protection
- Personal medication
Pre-course practice plan
- Three weeks before: knife cuts daily, twenty minutes (slice, dice, brunoise, julienne); buy a sack of carrots and onions and time yourself
- Two weeks before: pick three components from Section 12 (one stock, one mother sauce, one dough) and make them at home; note what worked and what did not
- Two weeks before: run a 90-minute prep block (Section 9 drill); three dishes, written list, hit the marks, cook for friends or family
- One week before: run a market-shop-no-plan day (Section 13 drill); buy what looks best, cook lunch and dinner from what you bought
- One week before: plate a single ingredient five different ways across the week (Section 10 drill); photograph each and note which felt finished
- Three days before: sharpen your knife, pack your kit, re-read this guide cover to cover, write three questions to ask your instructor on Day 1
Personal readiness
- Reasonable physical condition (comfortable on your feet for ten hours)
- This guide read twice
- Three questions noted to ask your instructor on Day 1
See you in the kitchen. Quality. Delivered. Together.