Last week, nearly two dozen Culinary Concepts AB’s Go Cook alumni were hosted by the leadership team at Virginia Guest House to tour their recently completed facilities, learn about various culinary career pathways, and most importantly, celebrate International Chef’s Day!
As a hospitality workforce development training provider with over a hundred alumni that are now professionals working in the industry, International Chef’s Day is an important, almost sacrosanct, day for our team to honor. It also was the primary reason for our visit to Virginia Guest House, serving as a great opportunity to put our mission into action and build community through food.
For those that don’t know, Virginia Guest House is a recently completed, contemporary 214 room hotel that sits smack in the middle of Charlottesville, VA and on UVA’s ever-blossoming campus. They are now open for business, offering a warm, bright hospitable space for visiting faculty, families, future students, and tourists to stay while visiting Charlottesville.
And, importantly for our alumni and Guest House’s culinary team, it is a professional Chef’s dream. With a gorgeous, sunlit dining room and pristine open kitchen full of all the cutting edge equipment, Guest House provides their employees with wonderful spaces to cook, serve, learn, and grow. Between the expansive, well-appointed front of house seating area and the multi-floor back of house facilities, this place was designed to foster hospitality workforce development and create community through food.
And, as mentioned, there was no better way to celebrate International Chef’s Day and introduce our students to potential culinary career pathways than by sharing a meaningful visit with the Guest House leadership team and taking an immersive, interactive tour of their facilities.
Exploring Culinary Career Pathways Through Experiential Learning
Led by Executive Chef Joe Ponte, our students were given a sneak peek into nearly all of Virginia Guest House’s beautiful new dining, culinary, and hospitality facilities. To say the space is impressive would be an understatement.
It is bright, super clean, tastefully designed, thoughtfully well-appointed, and an all around vibrant, refreshing place to be in. It feels welcoming, spacious, and homey with underlying upscale hotel vibes and all the essential amenities. Whether you are there to eat, work, tour Charlottesville, convene, or celebrate International Chef’s Day, the Guest House team is creating something really special.
In addition to our “all-access” tour and interactive cooking demo graciously served up by Chef Joe, the students were also greeted by General Manager Gregg Hilker, Russ Cronberg who serves as UVA Foundation’s Director of Hospitality, and Guest House’s HR Director, Amanda Crawford.
Each of these members of the leadership team took time to share truly valuable hospitality workforce development insights with Go Cook alumni. They introduced students to culinary career pathways, schooled us on their sustainability initiatives, and welcomed us all with a warmth and kindness that exemplifies what exceptional hospitality looks like in practice.
The tour wasn’t your average guest tour, either. Sure the students saw the refreshing, pristine lobby and sunlit, well-appointed dining room surrounded by expansive windows and an open kitchen concept. Everything from the physical layout of the space to the glowing kitchen to the cozy chairs and inviting seating areas made me want to stay for dinner, a drink, dancing and more!
But our alumni – many now professional culinarians themselves – didn’t just see the kitchen or lobby. They also got to venture deep, deep into the back of the house, where the entire culinary team skillfully prepares and plates all their delectable dishes.
Chef Joe took us on a multi-floor tour, exploring many different culinary-dedicated spaces and learning all about their team’s nutrition and environmentally-conscious projects, which will soon earn them the notable designation of being a Certified Green Hotel.
Along the way, we met team members creating all sorts of different diet-friendly dishes and diligently preparing hundreds of meals for conference guests. Students saw everything from the hotel’s top-notch professional prep kitchen with state-of-art equipment to their indoor rooms “hidden” behind the kitchens that are specifically designated for composting and oil recycling programs.
In sum, our alumni got to learn key cooking and diet techniques, explore possible culinary career pathways at Guest House, and were given an important inside look at what culinary leaders in the industry are doing at their properties these days. And, the proverbial icing on the cake came when Chef Joe, with Chef Ami serving as Sous, cooked up a hearty, health-conscious vegetarian bowl teeming with grains, greens, and lots of other veggies.
While the day was a resounding success and we all left feeling educated, inspired, and grateful, this wasn’t an ordinary tour on an ordinary day, nor was it just about meeting the Guest house team and learning about culinary career pathways. Remember, it was ultimately all about honoring Chefs worldwide because…
It was International Chef’s Day! Oh yeaaaaaa.
Celebrate The Chefs We Will!
So, to reiterate, the real reason for the culinary gathering with the VA Guest house team, CCAB alumni, and our growing community of culinarians was to come together, build community through food, and celebrate International Chef’s Day.
This annual holiday lands on every October 20th, and the purpose is to focus on promoting culinary education and empowering the next generation of culinarians. It is an opportunity for seasoned chefs to take intentional time to pass down their culinary wisdom, skills, and knowledge to the next generation.
More generally, the day also recognizes the vital role Chef’s play in our daily lives and in the hospitality industry as a whole. It is a chance for us all – both those in hospitality workforce development and the general public – to celebrate all the Chefs worldwide for their dedication to their craft and to ensuring those they serve eat and live well.
Without question, honoring this day for us was pretty much mandatory. After all, there are hundreds of thousands of talented, fiercely dedicated Chefs who have studied and trained hard to provide tasty meals on our tables when we dine – ones that bring us all sustenance, entertainment, and nourishment. Put simply, Chefs play a vital role in our daily lives by providing a service that we all benefit from, and one that frankly, we can often take for granted.
Many chefs – probably the majority of them – work long, less than ideal hours, in hot, busy kitchens to provide patrons with the daily dose of food, energy, and connection that we all need and enjoy. Anyone who knows a Chef knows they are truly unique, special people who serve a noble purpose in each of our daily lives.
Ultimately, chefs don’t just put delicious food on our table, but they bring us together with friends, family, colleagues, and strangers to connect, celebrate special days, make memories, and share a meaningful meal. Chefs – by the very nature of their work – build community through food.
For these reasons and so many more, people often say that the kitchen is the heart of a hotel. And I would take it a step further and say that culinary is the heartbeat of a community. Take a moment to consider the following:
What role does culinary – restaurants, food trucks, food pantries, and more – play in your community? How does it influence your life and the lives of your loved ones?
This idea got me thinking…
Why on earth am I so inspired by Chefs!? Is it their energy? Mindset? Attitudes? Work ethic? What is it about working with Chef’s that seems to motivate and energize me so much?!
Why Chefs Inspire Me
Let’s start this section by stating what I think is already obvious: I am not a trained nor professional Chef. At all.
I pretend to be an Executive Chef in my kitchen at home, with my wife serving as the best Sous ever…that is until she reminds me she’s the one in charge, showing me up with a perfect mise en place and all around a much more thoughtful approach to her meals.
While I really do enjoy cooking for friends and family, especially the creative and service components of it, I very humbly recognize that I am a long way from being a professional chef, much less an Executive Chef.
But I do freaking love them. They are fascinating creatures who do so much good for us all. Not only do they fundamentally build community through food and play an essential role in hospitality workforce development, they tend to be some of the most interesting people I’ve met.
As one who has traveled around the world, studied with Shamans, learned from philosophers, and worked with powerhouse people in the political and business world, there is no professional role more inspiring to me than that of the Chef. I continue to be truly amazed and wildly mesmerized by the mind, discipline, and demeanor of the Chefs I meet.
And, much of this, is thanks to the hospitality workforce development programs we offer at Culinary Concepts AB. Our programs create culinary career pathways, but they also connect our team and alumni to a much bigger bucket of Chefs, all of whom continue to impress and inspire me. Allow me to elaborate:
For starters, they always seem to have big energy, big personalities, and, most importantly, big hearts. They are characters who care a lot. They are “one-of-a-kind” types of people; usually a bit quirky or eccentric and always unforgettable. But they also are people who do lots of good in and for their communities, especially to feed those in need or serve in times of crisis and natural disasters.
In my experience, chefs tend to be equal parts creators, entertainers, engineers, and educators. They are visionaries who put their plans into action, nearly all day every day. They are doers, not just dreamers or thinkers, consistently taking theory and translating it into practice. And then they adapt, revise, create, and problem solve over, and over, and over again.
This process, of course, happens concurrently as a Chef articulates their culinary visions, repeatedly teaching, training, and upskilling their team in real time while fastidiously focusing on details that I could only dream to notice. This means Chefs are integral to fostering culinary career pathways for future talent and thus play an essential role in hospitality workforce development.
Not just that, but they do all that day in and day out in often difficult, high-pressure environments. They usually operate in the back of the house, which is not always glamorous or pretty, but instead a hot, busy, noisy kitchen bursting with smoke, flavor, and sweat. Ever stood back and just witnessed a Chef in a full-on dinner rush?! Fascinating experience.
It seems to me that Chef’s educate, train, innovate, problem-solve, communicate, cook, and adapt all in real time, all the time. They are constantly on and always creating, evolving, and growing. And, they do so with an energy, focus, and all around discipline that exemplifies what it means to be a high-performer and actualized human.
So, sure we can say great chefs have great soft skills, but it goes way behind skills and that isn’t the only reason I am inspired by them.
Chefs think and move differently. They don’t just move with purpose or passion. They operate with a super-human mindset and live with an attitude consisting of equal parts grit, concentration, determination, resilience, hard-work, dedication to their craft, and a whole lot more.
I could go on and on. But I think the point has been made. Chef’s inspire me because of who they are, what they do, and how they approach their craft. They uplift the community through food and create culinary career pathways for the next generation. Their daily lives are rooted in this crazy, vibrant personality profile of care, character, creativity, integrity, competency, consistency, service, skills, and an uncanny dedication to perfection.
As we close this piece, it is worth reiterating that, ultimately, a Chef’s entire professional purpose remains focused on others, not themselves. Their days and lives are dedicated to training others on the team, serving others through, and showing up for others whether it be their colleagues, organization, or like Chef Joe did for our alumni on International Chef’s day.
This, friends, is why culinary is not just the heart of hospitality, but why Chef’s are the heartbeat of a community. They inspire me and so many others to be better and do better, while continuously improving their community through food.
And, that is why International Chef’s Day – and all Chefs worldwide – should be honored, celebrated, and deeply appreciated by us all.
