The word ‘Michelin’ holds a certain amount of weight in the world of private staffing. And as we have seen this year, there seems to be an ever-increasing desire for Yacht Chefs to have a restaurant background with a preference on Michelin experience. So, what makes it so sought-after?
Coming from a high-profile, fast-paced restaurant background means that you will often have the following skills and experience.
- Be used to rigorous hygiene standards and tidiness with the hope that your fridge organisation will be down to a fine art! So, when you do get onboard, you will hopefully be able to keep up with the maintenance schedules like it’s a breeze.
- Experience working under some of the top chefs, who have hopefully shared their knowledge.
- An ability to work well under pressure – with reservations out the door and long hours, the busy ways of yachting hopefully won’t come as a surprise or too much of an adjustment.
- An appreciation for fine dining and ability to create top-level food to the same standard that a yacht owner will expect.
From a yacht perspective, having Michelin experience gives you recognition and notoriety too. If the vessel is a charter yacht, for example, having a yacht chef from a well-known and well-respected restaurant brand is an excellent selling point to prospective guests.
In a recent interview with Rudi Henwood, we explored how Michelin experience can help a yacht chef to not only bag their first job, but excel onboard too.
Yacht chef interview – Rudi Henwood
Rudi’s Chef experience dates back to 2011, where he quickly worked his way up from a kitchen porter to Commis and then a Demi Chef de Partie.
Over the years, he worked for a variety of establishments including a Georgian country house, an award-winning casual dining restaurant and then a 1 Michelin Star fine dining restaurant. Rudi also spent a year working in Barcelona before getting his first yacht chef job.
Rudi is now Sole Chef on a 57m superyacht.
When did you first get into yachting?
I joined my first boat in April 2019, but it was during the summer previous to that when I first heard about yachting.
We were a very small team in a restaurant in rural Ireland and the Head Chef asked one of his ex- colleagues from a 2 Michelin Star in Dublin to come and lend a hand for the May Bank Holiday. When he pulled up in an Audi RS3, it piqued my interest – turned out he’d been in yachting for a few years at that point.
I talked with him about yachting and after hearing you can sometimes work six months of the year yet be paid for 12 and travel the world while you do it, I had to find out more. We finished that summer season with being awarded a Michelin star in the September and I went off to Barcelona, spent a few months enjoying life there and doing my yachting certificates.
What Michelin experience do you have and how did this help secure your role?
I had only worked at that one starred restaurant where I was part of the team who won the first star for the Head Chef. As my first role on boats was a Sous Chef position, I believe it showed the Head Chef that I had a strong enough chef foundation and knowledge in skills and techniques that would be beneficial to him in terms of me assisting with breads, dessert prep, etc. I am not a ‘classically trained’ chef through culinary school/college and I have learned through hard work and guidance of my superiors in restaurants.
Now I have experience in 1, 2 and 3 Michelin Star restaurants. I have taken periodic breaks from yachting to get back into the restaurant world throughout my five years on boats. I’ve used it as an opportunity to just see amazing techniques in groundbreaking restaurants in Copenhagen doing stages, but also taken longer stints on land to secure proper jobs in 2- and 3-Star restaurants in the UK and at home in Ireland to feel what it’s like to truly be part of a chef brigade again.
I believe that showing the constant drive to improve oneself and to work with some of the best chefs in the restaurant world has now helped with impressing recruiters, Captains and owners for me to get senior roles on yachts.
What are the main similarities and difference to being a yacht chef and Michelin restaurant chef?
The main similarity for me would be the high standards and expectations of the guests. In a 3-star restaurant, diners are expecting perfection because of the reputation and the price of the experience, much like they are if they own or charter a superyacht, and quite right!
The largest differences as I see it is in a restaurant you have a menu. You allow for dietary restrictions/allergies but for the most part, the chef is in control and conducts the whole process from start to finish.
On a superyacht, the guest is in control. You have to be ready for basically anything, at any time. As an example, on my first boat where I was Sous Chef, we had 20 guests for dinner. The Head Chef and I had collaborated on a three-course menu – two choices for starters and mains, and one dessert option, and the owners wanted it every day.
When the Chief Stew delivered the order sheet for the night, there were three guests who had ordered from our menu and the other 17 ordered food that included three different pasta dishes, various omelettes, Niçoise salad, burgers, jacket potatoes, Caesar salad and salmon tartare. “Oh and they want it now by the way,” said the Chief Stew. The Head chef and I just gave each other a look and said “Please give us 20 minutes.”
Service is service but the sheer surprises and curveballs that yachting can throw at you means you have to be so adaptable and able to handle your emotions and stresses. From the boss and his daughter eating four watermelons in a day; and then never again for the rest of the season (after you then have in stock four watermelons at all time), to requests for a whole salt baked sea bass just as you serve sushi, club sandwiches at 7am just as you enter the galley, and let’s not even get started on surprise birthday cakes!
What advice would you give to a land-based chef looking to transition to yachting?
Be ready to adapt the way you think about yourself and your work. When people come to a high-end restaurant, it is for the food. Service, atmosphere and wine also of course, but it’s the food and the chefs that are the main focus.
On yachts, guests, owners and even the crew at times expect to be blown away by their chef’s ability, knowledge and skills, wanting multi course tasting menus or authentic diverse international cuisines. But also, they might just want you to make cheese toasties, a plate of salted cucumber slices or yet another pasta pesto.
You have to keep your own motivation and standards to serve the ooziest and crispiest cheese toastie you can, the most consistently sliced and delicately seasoned cucumber or make that pesto so damn verdantly vibrant that you still get to satisfy the drive that makes us all chefs – the drive to do your best.
There is a huge range of diversity in the Yacht Chef world and I can only recommend it. You get to wake up every day in new beautiful coves and bays, explore local markets, get paid incomparably to what you do on land and set yourself up to fulfil your dreams on land.
The main piece of advice? Enjoy yourself because it really could be worse
Michelin experience is, of course, not the only thing that makes you stand out as a prospective yacht chef, and there are plenty of other skills and experience that are highly valued too, so don’t let the lack of it stop you from exploring opportunities.
The one piece of advice we would give is diversify. You may have worked for 5 years at a French Michelin starred restaurant but as the interview above indicates, you need to be flexible. French one night, the freshly caught tuna the following, burgers and junk food the next, Mexican, Chinese, Asian Fusion.
You need to be able to tun your hand to lots of things and be flexible. Plus potentially working in a small galley, lack of provisioning depending on your location, lots of curve balls and doing your own washing up.
Whatever your Chef or yachting experience, if you are looking for your next role, please reach out to me – jasmin@quaycrew.com.
Follow Chef Rudi on Instagram.
