Sous Chef - Cooking up A Wonder

In any organization, the head or leader always requires someone to assist them and make their work easier and work load lighter. The same hierarchy is followed in the kitchens and messes of restaurants and eateries. The Executive Chef or Head Chef has an extremely skilled person working directly under them. The latter is known as the Sous Chef.

Smaller restaurants or eateries may not be in sync with the concept of having a sous chef but they are a must in all reputed eating places and especially high-end restaurants. The job of a sous chef is to help and assist the executive chef and to manage the kitchen and the dining services.

A Sous Chef is second in command and is responsible for allocating different duties to the staff as per their roles, designing the menu for each day, taking care of all the operations in the kitchen, communicating with the other departments of the restaurant and interacting with the guests and making sure that they are served and treated well. Some big and reputed hotels and restaurants may have not one or two but several sous chefs.

A Sous chef should be a good leader of people and be very adept at managing them. He/she should also be a good manager of situations and things. The position of a sous chef is one that is revered and treated with great respect with by their sub-ordinates as it is very high up in the pecking order and to reach to this position, one must be extremely devoted, hard-working, dedicated and committed throughout their career.

As they are people who have to handle the most number of responsibilities in a restaurant, sous chefs must be very good at management. Also as a sous chef, you have to interact with people who might be much less literate than you or much more experienced and knowing than you. One has to know the nuances of dealing with all the different kinds of people. This job requires long hours of work and may eat into one’s personal space and time. One must be able to operate efficiently even under pressure and also possess the ability to remain cheerful at all times.

To get there, one needs to have a Bachelor’s degree in Hotel Management. A training program in kitchen management also helps. Training under various sous chefs before actually becoming one proves to be an added advantage. Institutes in India that offer courses in Hotel Management are the National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology, the Institute of Hotel Management, Catering and Nutrition, New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Hotel Management Aurangabad, Maharashtra.

The pay scale for this job is quite high. If one is employed as a sous chef in a leading hotel or a well-known restaurant, they can easily make, 40,000 INR to 70,000 INR on a monthly basis. if one has been hired by an extremely posh restaurant or hotel, they can earn up to 1,00,000 INR per month.