Sous Chef
All Star Lanes
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My name is Marvin.
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I work as a sous chef in All Star Lanes, which is in Westfield,
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London, in White City.
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I’ve been working in the company
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now for just gone 17 years now.
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All Star Lanes is a restaurant chain.
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We have five restaurants in London and it’s
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a mix of a restaurant and an American diner,
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and we have bowling as well.
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Sous chef is – I’m in charge of a small team, basically
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we get everything ready for the service in the evening,
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doing the ordering and stuff like fruit, veg, meat, that kind of things.
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Checking deliveries, making sure all our food temperatures and
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stuff are all up to date. The best thing
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is we change our menu regularly,
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so always we’re learning, the new dishes and stuff like that.
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Meeting new people as well.
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Sometimes it can be long hours.
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Maybe like 12 hours or more. Ten hours.
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Yeah.
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It depends on how busy we are.
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To start off, you need
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good knife skills, follow recipes and stuff like that.
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Sometimes being able to work under pressure as well.
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I only did my English and maths.
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I always knew I wanted to be involved in catering.
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My family’s massive cooks as well.
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My mum was a chef as well. From school I went into college,
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got my GNVQ in
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catering.
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My basic food level course as well.
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Then I’ve done the level two food level course as well.
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And then after that
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I went to a training centre and I did a catering training course there as well.
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The course ran for maybe
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six months or something like that.
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And we had loads of different placements.
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So one was in – I think the first one
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was in a small cafe. That time I was just basically,
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I started as a kitchen porter.
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I started to take more interest into doing basic
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food prep, like chopping vegetables and that kind of thing.
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And then slowly I started to work on
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the dessert section and the salad section.
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Then I just moved up from that.
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After I did my training I got offered a job in the
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Victoria and Albert Museum and that became my first proper job.
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Then from there I went to working in pubs by myself.
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A few other restaurants,
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and then now I’m in All Star Lanes.
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Our previous manager, our head chef
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suggested this job for me.
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But then she had a friend in All Star Lanes
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and then they offered me a job here. Basically, All Star Lanes is where I learnt
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pretty much all my skills.
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The advice I would give – try to look for,
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like I went to a training centre, training in catering.
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And then you can get work placements as well, or work experience,
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and then hopefully if you do well some of them will lead onto to a job as well.
“I always knew I wanted to be involved in catering.” After leaving school, Marvin went to catering college and then worked in a number of kitchens. He was offered his current job through a friend of his former manager.
More information about Chefs
The UK average salary is £29,813
There are 37.5 hours in the average working week
The UK workforce is 47% female and 53% male
Future employment
- Requisitions or purchases and examines foodstuffs from suppliers to ensure quality;
- Plans menus, prepares, seasons and cooks foodstuffs or oversees their preparation and monitors the quality of finished dishes;
- Supervises, organises and instructs kitchen staff and manages the whole kitchen or an area of the kitchen;
- Ensures relevant hygiene and health and safety standards are maintained within the kitchen;
- Plans and co-ordinates kitchen work such as fetching, clearing and cleaning of equipment and utensils.
