Eight teenage catering students from across Birmingham are
enjoying work experience at Michelin-starred and leading
restaurants in the city thanks to an innovative culinary
collaboration.
Social enterprise and training provider Enta, which offers a
pre-apprenticeship training course in catering, has teamed up with
Marketing Birmingham to arrange the work placements.
Restaurateurs and chefs from across Birmingham have backed the
project, which gives each trainee four separate month-long
placements at high-class kitchens including Purnell's, Simpsons,
Edmunds, Loves, Opus and Turners.
Shannon Meares,aged 17, from Walsall, is just one of the
trainees taking part.
She started working in the prestigious Lasan Indian restaurant -
which has won Gordon Ramsay's 'F Word Best Local Restaurant' award-
and will also complete a month-long placement at the Mint Hotel,
before moving onto two other kitchens.
In her first week at Lasan, Shannon took on basic but essential
kitchen-work like peeling onions and garlic, as well as helping
with some desserts. However, in her second week the confident
teenager asked to experience life at the front of house.
Shannon said: "It's hard work and very different from anything
I've ever done before. There's a lot of pressure at the front of
house and there's lots to do. But from the point of view of
learning it's great."
Meanwhile, 19-year-old Ramin Amini, from Aston, is training at
Simpsons.
He said: "I love food and having the chance to work in a
restaurant with this reputation is a wonderful opportunity. I'm
loving everything about it. The chefs are being so supportive and
I'm learning about food and the way a kitchen operates."
Susan Moloney, catering mentor at Enta, said: "It's a unique
opportunity for the trainees to see how truly top-class kitchens
work - and also to see what they can achieve if they work hard
enough.
"For them to experience several of the top Birmingham
restaurants and meet so many inspirational chefs so early in their
careers is an amazing opportunity."
The programme runs for 20 weeks and the students spend four
weeks in one restaurant before moving onto the next.