 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi all first time poster here. My wife and I, both 30 years of age, are seriously considering taking a career break this year to work in a ski resort for a season. We are looking into the possibility of becoming chalet hosts, and at the moment we are researching some chalet cookery courses. We do not have any commercial experience of catering, but both of us are competent in the kitchen and are well used to hosting dinner parties for up to 10 guests.
Does anyone know if this is something that would be useful for us to do, and have you any advice on which courses offer the best teaching and employment prospects? We are particularly interested in the Natives chalet cookery course. If it is necessary to do such a course we are more than willing to do so, but the courses are not cheap, the Natives one would cost circa £700 including travel costs and accommodation.
Given our level of experience, would the completion of a cookery course significantly boost our chances of securing employment, or would employers prefer to train their hosts in-house.
Thanks in advance for all your help. Maybe we'll look after you in the coming season. 
Aiden.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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If you're going to be looking for work for the season ahead then you may want to get your skates on; many of the larger tour operators have already started their recruitment drives for the winter season.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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ady_d, Welcome to the nut house, as Dav says, get yer skates on it's already application time. As you're both ion your 30's it has to be assumed (cue the ass,you,me,joke) that you're both bright enough to do a bit of research and practice regarding guest catering at altitude and wing it . . . rocket science it's not . . . common sense and planning it is! Lay like a rug and go for it . . .
. . . of course, if your joint culinary expertise tops out at Tesco's chill cabinet . . . then you're ****'d 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Welcome to Snowheads and seasonal work!!!! Have a look at the natives website and start applying!!! I don't think you need to do the cookery courses if you can cook! practice on your friends...what better excuse than to throw a few dinner parties!
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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When we did exactly what you're thinking of from a pretty familiar position Mrs M (OK we're slightly older but other than that) even though Mrs M was a very accomplished "dinner party cook" she chose to go on a cookery course with Orchards (http://www.orchardscookery.co.uk/) and actually found it invaluable.
Aparently the secret of successful "chalet cooking" isn't the "cooking" bit!!
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I would recommend you do a chalet cookery course. It is different from hosting your own dinners - altitude, tight budgets, poor equipment, ingredients not available, dietary requirements etc.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I would apply to Silver Ski, if you can cook for dinner parties up to 10 you'll be fine!
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September is the perfect time to do this. Don't work for one of the big Tour Operators. Don't bother with a cookery course - biggest waste of money - if you can make an omelet and CARE about food you can do this.
If you are happy to cook at home you just need to sort out an easy to prepare / cook / present menu. Practice it as much as you can. The more time you can save in the kitchen the more time you have to ski.
Phone Natives. They have lots of jobs at smaller chalet companies that would suit you much more than working for a big TO - where you will be working (and probably housed) with a load of 18 year olds.
If you need help with your menu plans post up, there are plenty of people with experience on here. (I've cooked for 7 seasons and employed chefs for a further 2, ranging from the cheapest chalets in the Alps to 5*, 4 course haute cuisine).
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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kevindonkleywood, ady_d has already seen the Natives course, and that's why he's asking:-
| ady_d wrote: |
Does anyone know if this is something that would be useful for us to do, and have you any advice on which courses offer the best teaching and employment prospects? We are particularly interested in the Natives chalet cookery course. If it is necessary to do such a course we are more than willing to do so, but the courses are not cheap, the Natives one would cost circa £700 including travel costs and accommodation.
Given our level of experience, would the completion of a cookery course significantly boost our chances of securing employment, or would employers prefer to train their hosts in-house.
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ady_d, I think if you and your wife are used to cooking for reasonably sized dinner parties then you will be fine! Remember the cookery courses are designed to cater for your average Joe Bloggs seasonnaire who might only be 18 years old, used to living with mum and dad and hasn't got a clue how to cook anything suitable for guests paying good money to eat.
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VolklAttivaS5, LOL oops i blame my age 
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You know it makes sense.
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VolklAttivaS5, I'd disagree.. the course my wife went on (double your assumed age) very proficient cook etc etc learnt a lot from it...... OK might not be worth anything if the OP were planning on working for one of the large TOs but if they're hoping to work together and for a smaller or even indepentant chalet then the quality of food needs to be higher.
There is a big difference between
a) Giving a dinner party for friends on a saturday night
and b) Serving a 3, 4 or even 5 course dinner to paying clients on 6 consecutive nights of a week having been up early to give them breakfast, cleaned the chalet, made afternoon tea all within a budget pre-defined by the owner.
Some of the differences I can think off from the cuff are;
> for friends cost is usually a low priority
> Friends don't mind if the food is not Perfect
> friends don't mind if they have to wait bewteen courses
> you have all day to prepare for a friends dinner party
> it doesn't matter if you have left overs
> shops are round the corner if you realise you've forgotten something.
In practical terms;
> Why serve cream brulee one night and meringues the next?
> How do you slice 2 duck breasts so that 5 clients think they're getting a really good portion?
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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I'd agree with Marcellus.
I've stayed in lots of chalets (both on business and on holiday) managed by a variety of people. These ranged from the TO-typical 18/19 year old on a gap year (OK food - only OK - but disorganised, slapdash, occasionally hungover/exhausted and prone to panicing), through to 40-something owner/operators whose livelihood depends on giving their guests excellent food and a relaxing experience, whilst not spending all day in the kitchen and all their profits on ingredients. The best chalet chefs/owners had - I think in all cases - been on some form of cookery course, and found the tips they picked up to be worth the cost alone, never mind the actual recipes and techniques.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Quote: |
Why serve cream brulee one night and meringues the next?
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well, although I do think a good quality course would be useful, anyone who can't think that one out for themselves has to be a fairly useless cook
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| pam w wrote: |
well, although I do think a good quality course would be useful, anyone who can't think that one out for themselves has to be a fairly useless cook |
I was only using it as an example of how "giving a dinner party" is different from properly catering a chalet.
Also do add; all of this should to be done by 11:30 so that the chalet operators get some "down time" every day otherwise they will "burn out"...... anyone who thinks that running a chalet properly is "living the dream" needs to consider that they will start at 06:30 and get to bed at 23:00 six days a week..
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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It's not rocket science. All the chalet operators are happy to give you tips / help advice, they want their clients to be happy.
Even the big T.O. will give you a few days 'training' when you get to resort. The smaller ones I have worked for, and something I then did for my teams, was to take it in turns in eating in the chalets during set up week so everyone can get used to their kitchens and used to the local produce. You learn when it's your turn to cook and you learn when it's your turn to eat - from laying the table, to presenting food.
I've seen (and employed) chalet cooks & chefs, it's interesting to see how people go about it in different ways. You learn the most from others who are there and doing it. If the OP came to me for a job and I liked them (ie thought they would make good hosts) I would get them to cook me a meal, providing they didn't kill me, within two or three nights I could make them in to better chalet cooks.
Sure, you could by pass this and spend £700 on a course to learn this, but the bottom line is a poor or unmotivated cook reflects badly on the chalet operator and if they can't spend a little time bringing you up to scratch, more fool them.
Even Crystal did this for me. When I was 19 and couldn't cook for toffee, my resort manager noticed I wasn't getting home until really late. She came and spent two nights with me, helping a little. In the end it was one thing that really made a difference: wash up as you go along, leaving it all to the end will give you a late night of clearing up.
All of these skills could be learned from a book, not a course. If people are really paying £700 for a course, it might be time to self publish my memoirs 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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You can learn skills from a book, but it's not the same as practice, which you get with a cookery course. I've done a cookery course and personally found it useful, it gave me the confidence and improved my skills, something you don't always get the time to do during the training week at the start of the season. Plus I had the added bonus of the course being in a chalet in a ski resort so I was cooking at altitude some of the food I'd later be preparing for guests in the sort of surroundings I'd be in on the season.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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marcellus, I do agree with you that it's not just about the cooking, and there are other things to consider like budgeting, meal planning over consecutive nights so that there is limited or no wastage etc. However, I do feel that maturity and common sense do help a great deal with these sorts of things, and this appears to be echoed in the posts submitted by parlor and Masque. My concern would be, would they spend too much time "learning the basics" on the Natives course because the other people on the course have very limited cooking experience indeed in the first place prior to going, before they then go on to tell them the useful things they might want to know re the budgeting etc.
If so, then it's costing a lot of money for them to come away with a 'few tips' so to speak, whereas the young ones who have gone on the course to learn everything from scratch having only ever cooked very simple meals for themselves, if anything at all, have had their money's worth (or their parents money's worth) if you see what I mean, and that's fair enough. The course then has done it's job.
I also probably should have said in my post above that I was referring to the Natives course being mostly made up of your average 18 year old seasonnaires, I do appreciate other courses may have a different clientele. Either way if someone was going to do a cookery course, even if they are already a pretty good cook, I'd agree that they'd probably pick up some useful tips somewhere along the line, so I don't dispute that, everyone can learn from something.
The question is, is it worth £700 (each presumably as the Native's course even in the UK is £449 per person) to acquire the extra skills that ady_d and Mrs ady_d are presumably missing? I don't know if it is  £700 might not be very much money to them, in which case they may foresee it to be worth it, but to the majority of people £700 is a fair amount of cash and that's £1400 for the pair of them so it does make me wonder.
As parlor has said, the tour operator gives another few days training when the people get to resort anyway regardless of whether people have done cookery courses or not.
Another thing I'd say is that I've stayed in a chalet 3 times now coming up to the end of the season (but not the last week) and 2 out of 3 times they ran out of food, or they were getting very low on food to an extent where the meals/portions were affected. As both chalets (it was Mark Warner the one time and SkiWorld the other 2 times) were run by young staff, I'd say there's a good chance that they would have completed a cookery course of some kind, yet they still managed to run out of food.
So, I do think that maturity and common sense have a large part to play in running a chalet succesfully, and I don't think a cookery course for the two people in question is necessarily going to make a huge difference one way or another, I think as parlor has said, you do learn a lot as you go along too. If it was substantially less of an outlay than £700 I'd say go for it, but we're talking £1400 here for the two of them when they already are pretty competent folks in the kitchen by the sounds of it.
Bet the courses are good fun though, and they'd meet others at the same time.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Sitter, valid point about the altitude bit and it giving you a bit of prep.
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Surely it depends entirely on the chalet? Some of those we stayed in in the past, at the budget level, I'm sure I could cope with, from a lifetime of experience including things like catering for a week on a boat in the nether regions of the Hebrides, with limited shopping opportunities, or family Christmases in rented youth hostels. At the other end of the scale my son has worked in several (most recently for Parisian bankers with a private chalet) which required professional experience and huge resourcefulness (when they unexpectedly brought back half a dozen friends for dinner, for example) but where there was no "budget" to speak of. He was paid loads, as well as having superb accommodation, ski pass etc. And if the lobster looked good that day, he'd get lobster. I think I'd try to find a job first, making it clear that I was up for further training if required, and keen to learn.
The last chalet we stayed at, before buying an apartment, was this one http://www.leski.com/index/info/RIKIKI_%2822%29/176
The couple who ran it were New Zealanders - it's a big chalet for 2 people but they had it down to a very fine art, after several seasons. They were excellent, and they got out skiing quite a lot, but they did say that in their first season they'd scarcely got out at all. Cleaning such a big chalet and organising high quality meals took them almost all day. Whoever said that it's very hard work - I'm quite sure it is. Even my experience of having friends and family to stay in our apartment has left me in no doubt about that! When there's heaps of snow around, a supermarket run, then carrying back and stowing a couple of hundred euros worth of shopping is a mission. And in a chalet it could easily be 1000 euros worth, or more. Not for the faint-hearted, but could be very rewarding for the right people. I do feel rather sorry for the kids I see trailing round Carrefour with huge trollies full of pasta and tomato sauce, though.
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VolklAttivaS5, fair comment.... I wasn't suggesting teh Natives course for one second... see my 1st post.
2ndly to the OP..... you need to think about how you will allocate the chalet roles between you adn your wife........ I'd suggest just one of you needs to go on the course..... SPeaking to my wife she reckons average age on her course was early 30s...
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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marcellus, no I know you weren't, but I was
The one your wife did looks like a better choice than the Natives one, and more likely to attract the more mature applicant IMO as it looks more professional.
pam w,
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Surely it depends entirely on the chalet? Some of those we stayed in in the past, at the budget level, I'm sure I could cope with, from a lifetime of experience including things like catering for a week on a boat in the nether regions of the Hebrides, with limited shopping opportunities, or family Christmases in rented youth hostels. At the other end of the scale my son has worked in several (most recently for Parisian bankers with a private chalet) which required professional experience and huge resourcefulness (when they unexpectedly brought back half a dozen friends for dinner, for example) but where there was no "budget" to speak of. He was paid loads, as well as having superb accommodation, ski pass etc. And if the lobster looked good that day, he'd get lobster. I think I'd try to find a job first, making it clear that I was up for further training if required, and keen to learn.
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Very good advice, this pam w. Could be that they'd manage ok in some places, but would need additional skills in others.
On a side note, I can't believe the £695-£745 some folk obviously must pay for the University Course (through the Orchard Cookery link)  but that's a whole different thread!
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cookery courses are very expensive. My sister did a Rick Stein one in Padstow - fish cooker - with her son, and they both enjoyed it enormously but it weren't cheap. Was a Christmas present. I quite fancy that bread one with a French chef guy in Bath. But maybe that's just the way he kneads the bread on his video..... 
My son learnt his skills working in restaurants - he never had any formal training, and he's not a professional cook, he's a student. But he loves food and is a quick learner (apparently you need to get good at slyly watching what people are doing out of the corner of your eye, as chefs tend not to share their recipes). Actually, come to think of it, he did have some formal training when he started doing sushi - with no prior experience of anything, at that stage, except flipping a few burgers. But it was "on the job" training - he was paid for it.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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pam w, I think if you have a keen interest in something, then you do learn quickly from others, and from your own mistakes of course.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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| VolklAttivaS5 wrote: |
As parlor has said, the tour operator gives another few days training when the people get to resort anyway regardless of whether people have done cookery courses or not.
Another thing I'd say is that I've stayed in a chalet 3 times now coming up to the end of the season (but not the last week) and 2 out of 3 times they ran out of food, or they were getting very low on food to an extent where the meals/portions were affected. As both chalets (it was Mark Warner the one time and SkiWorld the other 2 times) were run by young staff, I'd say there's a good chance that they would have completed a cookery course of some kind, yet they still managed to run out of food.
Bet the courses are good fun though, and they'd meet others at the same time. |
Just a few comments on these points.
TO's do give you training when you get to resort, but in my experience it doesn't involve much training on the actual cooking and associated skills, there is quite a lot on cleaning and hygeine regulations, weekly paperwork, welcome speaches, the company etc. that they can't always fit that much cooking specific training in. This may vary with company and country tho.
May not entirely be the chalet staff's fault they ran out of food, towards the end of season you'll find that the staff are asked to run stock down and are expected not to be ordering/buying much, and I know that with some companies it's not actually the chalet staff per se that do the orders. The staff fill out the order form and it gets handed over to the chalets manager, along with the weekly paperwork and stock take who may then adjust the order accordingly. Not saying that this was the case with your guys, but it is something that does go on in some places.
Final point, definately, I had a great time on the cookery course, and ended up in the same resort as somebody on my course.
All down to the individual, some larger TO's run their own cookery courses which get you a job with them once completed.
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Hi there, there is a new cookery course set up by MansxSki.com running 19-24 Sept which looks to cater (excuse the pun) for the more mature end and may help you get a job with a top-end Chalet. The chef is Hervé Williams and the cost is £595. www.manxski.com
I've never done a cookery course. Plus can't really cook! BUT I'm just sharing some knowledge, as I happened to speak to the very nice folk at ManxSki just yesterday about a booking, and they mentioned their course.
When you apply for the jobs you can always put in the application form that you have signed up for the course - even tho it is not running til closer to the season.
Bon Chance.
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You know it makes sense.
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Maybe they do French courses, too?
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FAQ
