Dedicate yourself to Kitchen... | When you find your passion

Dear readers, I am pleased to greet you, again I share with you a little of what has been my day to day in this world of gastronomy. I hope you enjoy it...

As I mentioned in my previous publication, my level of life at work took a 360 degree turn, my initial work was totally dedicated to telecommunications, I learned with engineers and even tried to study Computer Engineering, a career that I did not finish, however, is another long story ...

Thinking as an engineer, I must say that I organize my life (pears with pears and apples with apples), everything that I do nowadays, even in the kitchen, must be geometric, that is, everything meticulously organized...

The kitchen came to my life one day that God gave us the opportunity (to my family and me, especially thanks to my mother), to start a business of our own. The proposal was to run a school canteen...

This is where my questions began, since I had never directed anything that had to do with gastronomy, but my excitement for doing so was remarkable, since I definitely knew that I had found my passion...

The project started and in the hands of my family, we not only managed to have a successful business, but we became the best franchise in terms of school canteens…

For us, the staff was always the most important thing, we always maintained the concept of fraternity. For the business to be successful, his team had to be happy and feel at home...

Between hiring and hiring, one day I decided to study to become a Chef, that's when I discovered "The Professional Cooking School", there I spent almost a year, day after day training, without a doubt it was a wonderful year, where I met people from quality. In school everything was like living in wonderland...

After finishing school, I immediately looked for a place to do my internships, I had to do three months to take some experience. That's when I found a restaurant where I knew from the first moment that I should belong to that team. There was chemistry.

My first day of internship arrived, I arrived as if it were the first day at school, with my sharp knives, my handkerchiefs and my impeccable filipina. My first surprise ... finding people with only 18 years of age ... I was twice as old as them, I wanted to run away…

My knives would carry dust for a long time, because if I thought to use them, I was wrong, before that I should be the one who cleaned all the dishes while the others cooked ..

The days passed and with the time I adapted, there were many pains in the back and legs for the amount of hours stopped and inclined washing dishes.

The internships continued, I was not the only one who cleaned since I was instilling in the team the famous "cleaning immediately". It is here where we collaborate and never let accumulate anything to always keep the area clean. Being at this level I told; Now if I'm going to dust off the knives... action comes!

Well no, the next step was clean chili and corn in industrial quantities, then move on to peel potatoes, clean shrimp, squid, in short... the work that nobody wanted to do. But as a chef explained to me in cooking school, you must get to love what you hate most to do to make the task less overwhelming.

I continued my internship, and the friends were understanding that I was one more of the group and not the new one, therefore, the activities were flowing, with the experience I brought from the canteen I adapted procedures and managed to implement work schemes that today day they continue in the production area where I started ..

I finished my internships and for my biggest surprise the company had decided to hire me, they offered me the position of "Kitchen Assistant". I was happy, physically exhausted by the amount of hours I worked, but happy to get the contract. I was always proactive, I was the first to arrive and the last one to leave, thanks to that, after two months they offered me another position, I stopped being a kitchen assistant to become an advanced assistant, lol....

The truth is with the passage of time, I went through different positions until I became the Head of Production, for me it was a dream to be the Leader of the department that opened the doors for me and where I started washing dishes.

Being Head of Production marked a before and after, of the positions that I have had was the most representative, since it gave me the opportunity to train interns (new chefs) from different academies, to be able to leave a little of me to each one of them.

As told, when I came to this company as an intern, I that chemistry existed, I had fallen in love with the way in which its directors managed the company, since it was exactly the same scheme that my family and I had in the canteen. A concept of family and respect for your work team that you do not get everywhere.

Time went on and they offered me a new position, that of Deputy Manager of the restaurant, for me it was an honor, I knew what that could cost me, since I would move to a more administrative place to leave the knives aside, however, it was aware that being Deputy Manager of this prestigious restaurant would help a lot in my curricular synthesis ...

My first day as Sub-Manager, I arrived at the premises, opened, checked that everything was in order and to my surprise, that day some inspectors arrived, they asked me for books, health permits and more. The truth of all this is that they fined the premises, the fine was the closing for 8 continuous days, at that moment I felt unsuccessful as Sub-Manager, on my first day I had already managed to close the establishment ... I wanted to run back to my production …

The time passed and thanks to the help of the work team I had, I managed to keep going up, after being the one who cleaned dishes, now I was in the highest position of the restaurant, I was the new Operations Manager…

A couple of weeks ago it was my farewell to the restaurant, I did not stop crying... My last day arrived and that great team was preparing surprises from early in the morning to say goodbye, special breakfast, family lunch (at work) and dinner. They had prepared a surprise farewell where they involved my family (blood), I closed with a brooch the gold, I definitely could not ask for more...

I worked for almost a year as the Manager, with a amazing team, I had people who loved their work so much and had such a sense of responsibility that I had no way to fail, today I have no way or words to thank those warriors ...

SantoBokado, is called this prestigious restaurant that I have spoken to you from the beginning and I can only say "THANKS", thank you for allowing me to go through each of the charges, thank you for allowing me to interact and do my bit, thank you for allowing me to be part of of his family….

By the way, I never hung up the knives, no matter how administrative my work was, every time I had an opportunity I was the one who prepared the famous and well-known "family meal"...

That's how I found my passion and I learned that to get to the top you have to know how to climb from the bottom, without a doubt nowadays I can say that I am proud to be a cook ...