My name is Guillaume Cantin. I am a junior member from the canadian culinary federation. I wanna talk to you about an amazing adventure that I lived in the last two years. Something that is at an embyonic point, but it is destined to a brilliant future. It’s the world culinary exchange. Maybe, you already heard some stuff about it. In 2007-08, the first exchange took place between Canada and the nordic countries. I was one of the five lucky juniors on the canadian team.
What is the world culinary exchange?
Simply, it’s an exchange between juniors from two different culinary federations. Each country form a team with five juniors on it and provide mentors to help them. The first year, the team A is going to visit the team B in their country. The second year, the team B is coming to visit the team A in their country. In 2007, the nordic countries came in Canada. Each team had to do a three courses meal with scallop, shrimp, salmon, halibut and chocolate as main ingredients for 55 persons. Like this, it’s seem easy, but when you think about it, we never met each other (juniors) before we came in Toronto and we had to organize everything before. We had to strucuture everything by e-mails: the menu, the orders for the ingredients and all the questions about the equipments. So, I think we wrote more than 250-300 e-mails. Also, we were working in a kitchen that noboby knows before. It was very special, because when we first met in Toronto, it was like we know a little bit each other, but it was the first time we were all together. This meal was challenging and everyone learned so much from it. Each team was on his side of the oven and the both menus were so different and so nice. For the second part, we have been in Norway between july 21st to july 27th during the Gladmat food festival in Stavanger. This year, we mixed the both team together to do just one team. At Gladmat festival, we had a restaurant of sixty places under a tent. We were running that restaurant for two days and we were doing three services each day. At the end, we did around 360 customers. The lunch services were three courses meal and the dinner service was a five courses meal. This time, their was a unique menu created by 9 juniors from five countries! Can you imagine all the discussions that we had before the event? It was a huge work to get the approval of everyone on one menu and it was so motivating.
Why I’m writing to you about it?
In the last two years, I lived an incredible adventure through the exchange and I wish that to anyone. This is why I’m talking about it to everyboby and I want this to be just the beginning of something bigger. For all the juniors that have been involved in this original event, for us, you are the best persons to talk all about it on the WACS. You represent us. During fall, Mr. Simpson, the president of the canadian culinary federation , will present a document about the world culinary exchange to the WACS. He is looking for an approval from the WACS.
Why you should talk about it and support it?
First, this event is an unique opportunity for a junior to meet great professionals, to see new cooking methods, to travel, to taste new products from other countries, to develop new skills and to have new friends! This activity is a good way for people from different countries to exchange. Also, for me, I improved my second language: the english. Another thing, the juniors learn to get well organize when you are doing everything at distance. Just an example, we had to caliber recipes for 360 portions for Norway. So, you have to order enough products for your services, but not too much, because you don’t want to do some waste. You are working in new kitchens and you have to adapt yourself rapidly to be efficient. Finally, this exchange is a two years process that form a junior on so many facets. It helps the junior in his apprenticeship to become a complete professionnal.
I’m giving some web site links to look at:
http://ccfcc.ca/en/content/view/100/67/
http://gladmatavis.no/junior-culinary-exchange-program/
Guillaume Cantin
Québec, Canada
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