Local Chef Graduates from Barchester’s Chef Academy

Staff and residents at Southgate Beaumont Care Home in Old Southgate, Enfield are celebrating because their much-loved head chef, Dan Brooks, has graduated from Barchester’s Chef Academy in the Class of 2022. The Academy was held at various different locations around the country over an 11 month period. The Academy is run by Barchester’s Hospitality Development and Standards Manager, Mervyn Knights, and helps chefs to both hone their skills and learn new ones, covering many different modules including cooking for residents living with dementia, budgeting, balancing flavours, minimising wastage, presentation skills and so much more.

Dan has worked in hospitality all his life, he started out working in hotels and restaurants. During the pandemic he needed to look for a different role and so he decided to try the care sector. Dan joined Barchester in August 2020 and he hasn’t looked back. He absolutely loves his job, he likes to chat to the residents to find out their likes and dislikes so he can present their food exactly the way they like it. He loves to come up with new ways to surprise and delight his residents with nutritious and flavoursome home-cooked meals and he finds the hours are much better for family life.

As he received his certificate, Dan told us:
“I really enjoyed taking part in the Academy and attending all the workshops, it was such a positive experience. I love to showcase my menus and I take great pride in how I present my dishes. Getting to know the other Barchester chefs, sharing recipes, tips and best practise was great fun and most of all I like to try to constantly improve our food and hospitality service for our residents, so the Academy was just perfect for this.”

General Manager, Beatrice Godfrey, said:
“This is an amazing achievement and the whole home wants to congratulate Dan. We are so proud of him. Dan is an outstanding chef, he is extremely creative producing wonderful three course menus for residents every day for lunch and dinner. This has been a chance to showcase to others in the company just what he can do in terms of his skill set and maintaining high standards of presentation together with nutritious meals. Dan’s food is just fabulous, the residents love his delicious meals, he is such a talented chef.”