From apprentice to head chef is a long and demanding road - with plenty of pitfalls along the way.

Chefs of today have to work with tight margins in a competitive commercial environment.

What's in a name? The term ''chef'' has come to be used quite loosely in recent years to mean anyone who has qualified after completing a cooking apprenticeship.

The word was originally French, and means chief, and was a shortened form of the term chef de cuisine - chief of the kitchen.

But if you examine an apprenticeship qualification document, you will see the person concerned has completed an apprenticeship in cookery and is by definition a cook. So, strictly speaking, they become a chef only when they have learnt far more than culinary skills and have risen to be in charge of a kitchen (a brigade).

Apprentices start their career learning the basics - knife skills, food-preparation techniques, receiving and storing goods, cleaning and hygiene, and working as part of a team. Their training should consist of formal courses in a TAFE college or similar, complemented by mentoring on the job from more senior members of their brigade, although many in the industry would maintain this two-pronged system has broken down and is no longer yielding the skills to match modern needs.

Instead of accepting responsibility for structured mentoring of apprentices, some hospitality businesses use apprentices as cheap labour, and I often come across apprentices performing menial tasks such as ''picking herbs'' (cleaning and selecting the choice leaves from bunches of herbs), for unreasonable periods of time, working with zen-like devotion. With this lack of commitment to workplace mentoring, there is often no enforcement of attendance or objective assessment of the skills and knowledge achieved in the apprentices' training at college.

1. Commis cook

Once trained and qualified, apprentices become commis cooks and take their place in the kitchen brigade with general food production duties, working through the different sections of the kitchen and gaining experience with a variety of equipment and more complex food preparation tasks. Commis cooks are the backbone of a kitchen brigade.

2. Chef de partie

Staff may be promoted to chef de partie or section chef. This is the first supervisory position in the kitchen, where people learn to lead other staff and run a section of the kitchen. Commercial kitchens are usually divided into several sections - the grill, pans, cold larder and ''the pass'', where all the dishes for a table come together for dispatch.

Larger kitchens, as in hotels, may have even more specialised sections, such as bouchier (butcher), boulangere (baker), patissier (pastry cook), saucier (soups and sauces) and more obscure specialities, such as entremetier (vegetable cook).

3. Sous chef

Chefs de partie would normally spend several years working in each section of the kitchen until familiar with the function of all of them. Once competent and possessing appropriate leadership skills, they may be promoted to sous chef (under chief).

Sous chefs are supposed to be chefs with L-plates, and are expected to run kitchen shifts in the absence of the chef, while they learn the management skills required to run an entire brigade. Sous chefs learn to run the dreaded pass - co-ordinating the various sections like an air-traffic controller and bringing all the dishes for a table together at the one time, and overseeing the dispatch to the wait staff. This is often a major step in their career, and a sous chef who fails to master the pass will not be able to function at a higher level, in charge of the whole brigade.

The sous chef should also be learning the non-culinary management duties required to run the kitchen. These include recruitment and training of staff, control of stock, food and wage costs, and maintaining standards of hygiene, sanitation and safety.

4. Head chef

Once a sous chef has spent several years learning to run the kitchen, they may have the chance to move up to a chef position. In a restaurant, the chef (or head chef as they are usually called) single-handedly controls the most money flowing through the business - considering the cost of food and kitchen wages together - as well as being responsible for menu design and food production.

The role of the chef has changed radically in the past 20 years or so due to deteriorating economics and the growth of the hospitality industry, and the chefs of today have to work with very tight margins in a very competitive commercial environment.

In the past, most chefs had to worry only about the culinary side of their job. Now the title chef should really apply only to someone who can cook excellently, manage staff, control costs and boost revenue - all in one of the toughest work environments imaginable.

Source:  goodfood.com.au - 2 April 2013