Packing up and moving home

After finishing my 4 months of placement it was time for me to leave Edinburgh and return home just in time for Christmas. Living in Edinburgh for the past few months has been a great experience, from working in a Brasserie and living the city life I have learnt so much and I have grown as a person and a chef.

Throughout my time in Dine I got to experience working on every section in the kitchen, from this I was able to learn new skills and also helped me to decide the direction I see my career going. I have not only learnt so much from the chefs and staff at dine but I have also made great friends in my time over there. working in a busy kitchen for 14 odd hours 5 days  a week is tiring but also thrilling, being able to enter a kitchen every morning and leaving every night smiling and laughing along with the chefs and knowing that going home you have learnt something new is a great feeling.

The images shown throughout this blog are dishes I helped the chefs to create and design. Working in a small kitchen (4-5 chefs) means that everyone is very close and has to work together in order for a service to run smoothly, everyone's opinion is appreciated and is taken into consideration. Working along side Stuart Muir (head chef and former Michelin star chef) taught me so much about being a chef and about the industry. Stuart is the owner of Dine and he works to only serve fresh, local in produce ingredients which made menu planning a challenge. Every month - six weeks the entire menu would have to be changed/ updated to include new seasonal produce to enhance the menus.

Over the Christmas period the menus would be cut down to allow the chefs to deal with the extreme number of covers during the shift. Groups of 8 or more could not order from the A lá Carte menu as this would be too time consuming and would not allow for a quick turnover on tables. This made it easier for chefs to deal with many large groups ordering at once over the busy period.

Overall the past few months have been a wonderful experience, I will be returning to Dine over the summer to work for Stuart once again and to further my experience in his restaurant. Although I was excited to be moving home for Christmas I was also reluctant to leave the team at Dine and also to be leaving Edinburgh. I look forward to my return during the summer, But more importantly I'm looking forward to Miami in march to study in Johnson and Wales University!!

Emma O'Neill