『The Person Before the Plate: Simon Lawrence on Winning Care Chef of the Year, Helping Three Others Win It, and Why He's Still Learning』のカバーアート

The Person Before the Plate: Simon Lawrence on Winning Care Chef of the Year, Helping Three Others Win It, and Why He's Still Learning

The Person Before the Plate: Simon Lawrence on Winning Care Chef of the Year, Helping Three Others Win It, and Why He's Still Learning

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 The Person Before the Plate: Simon Lawrence on Winning Care Chef of the Year, Helping Three Others Win It, and Why He's Still LearningSimon Lawrence won the NACC Care Chef of the Year in 2013 — and the day after, he was on a call about budget deficits. In this episode he talks to host Rob Spence about the twenty-year journey that got him there: from helping his mum run theme nights in sheltered housing, through three attempts at the competition and a highly commended, a second place, and finally the title. He also talks about what winning actually meant — not the achievement itself, but using it to help three other chefs go on and win it too.SHOW NOTESSimon Lawrence's route into care catering started with his mum. She was a home warden in sheltered housing and wanted to put on theme nights for residents; he was working in restaurants at the time and she asked if he could help. He helped. He enjoyed the banter, the communal meals, the residents. When a job came up in a care home not long after, it seemed a natural next step. That was twenty years ago.The transition from restaurants to care, he's clear, is harder than many chefs expect. A care kitchen demands an all-rounder: soup, stocks, sauces, baking, patisserie, fresh puddings for eighty or more residents every day. In a restaurant kitchen you might work a section for months. In a care home you have to do all of it, all the time. He started in a small home with twenty residents; an interview that was effectively a week's cooking trial, during which he was peppered with requests — and then moved to a brand-new home opening from scratch. That gave him something rare: the chance to meet every resident as they arrived, to build relationships from day one, to know all the families before the home was even full. He thinks that shaped everything that followed.His competition history runs from 2009 to 2013. First year: highly commended, very nervous, a small venue in Harrogate, and two people — Sue Coffrey and David Barker , who made him feel looked after despite his anxiety. Second year: second place and best dessert, beaten only by a chef called Ellie who went on to win the national title. That stung, but he took the consolation: he'd been beaten by the eventual winner. Third year: a new employer who had noticed him through the competition's profile, insisted he enter again, and turned out to be right. What followed the win was a platform, and he used it. He moved from running a single kitchen into developing and nurturing other chefs, and he has since played a supporting role in three more people winning the competition. One now runs her own business; another is an executive chef. He describes those outcomes as his proudest achievements from the whole experience. Not winning, but being part of other people winning. His wider assessment of the competition's importance to the sector is generous but precise: it works because the best care chefs bring the whole person into what they do. You can see it in the entrants. They win the title and the next day they're back in the kitchen, telling the residents where they've been. The residents were rooting for them all along.Subscribe wherever you listen — and if there's a chef in your kitchen who's been thinking about entering, this is the episode to send them.To learn about The National Association of Care Catering, please visit: https://www.thenacc.co.uk/A massive thank you to the Sponsors of the Care Chef of the Year:Unilever Food SolutionsLockhart Catering EquipmentRationalProcurement for CareThe Worshipful Company of CooksPowered by Paragon Creative Studios Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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