Alison Taafe
Foul-Mouthed television chef given a serve
Foul-Mouthed superchef Gordon Ramsay has a lot to answer for, says 42-year-old Alison Taafe. Ramsay's televised outbursts may be discouraging young people from wonderful careers as chefs. Taffe said most leading professional chefs regarded Ramsay as an arrogant egomaniac, a bully who rants and raves without much justification. "I've worked for people like that," said British-born Taafe, Queensland's leading cookery teacher. "I warn the student at some stage they might be subjected to abuse like that. But it's not all hell in the kitchen."
Taafe carries the grand title of Leading Vocational Teacher of Professional Cookery at Brisbane's Southbank Institute.
Her graduates are prized in the industry and are being snapped up as fast as she can turn them out. She believes this is because Queensland is undergoing a restaurant and cooking revolution fuelled by amazing local produce.
Queensland excels across the range of foods from beef to seafood, fruit and vegetables and grain products. "There is not much we lack,"she says. Taafe works at the institutes College of Tourism and Hospitality.
Her students will feed you lunch or dinner at a shiny new restaurant in Tribune St, so new it still doesn't have a name.
"We take chefs beyond the kitchen into the world of spreadsheets and HR," she said. "We aim to teach them how to run their own business." Students also get hands-on experience alongside seasoned chefs at the Sofitel, Parliament House and the Stamford Plaza.
After completing her cookery studies, Taafe turned down an offer to cook at Bickingham Palace to join the London headquarters of the JP Morgan bank to cook boardroom meals for wealthy investors. At 21 she was sent to the bank's Manhattan office and later became the family chef for a billionaire developer whose guests list included names like George Bush, Lauren Bacall and the King and Queen of Spain.
During an Australian odyssey she landed a job as head chef at the Australian pavilion at Expo in 1988 and decided to stay.
Ann Garms, a veteran of the COTAH board, says Taafe is a natural who has raised the bar in Australian chef training. "She is a dynamo. There is nothing she cant do." Each year the college stages a contest to choose a student for an internship at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. This year's winner, Joshua Clanus, 25, has sent Garms an email saying he intends to stay in Europe two years.
Garms personally throws in some money to sponsor two other students to London to work in the kitchens of the Great Easton Hotel in London.
The Courier Mail, October 6th, 2007