Local Chef Graduates from Barchester’s Chef Academy

Staff and residents at Reigate Beaumont Care Home in Reigate, Surrey are celebrating because their much-loved head chef, Roman Rybakowski, 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.

Originally from Poland, Roman’s first job when he arrived in England 18 years ago was as kitchen assistant at Reigate Beaumont. He worked his way up through the ranks and became head chef eight years ago. 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.

As he received his certificate, Roman 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, Pramojil Kurian, said:
“This is an amazing achievement and the whole home wants to congratulate Roman. We are so proud of him. Roman 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. Roman’s food is just fabulous, the residents love his delicious meals, he is such a talented chef.”