Chef Proprietor at the internationally acclaimed La Colombe Restaurant and 2015 Eat Out San Pellegrino Chef of the Year: At La Colombe we are very dependent on Silwood kitchen to staff our restaurant kitchens. 70% of our kitchen staff is Silwood trained, they enter with the basic skills needed to work in a world class kitchen and help us take the restaurant forward year after year. Over the years most senior positions are held by Silwood trained chefs, to name a few: James Gaag our head chef at La Colombe, John Norris Rodgers, our head chef at La Petite Colombe, as well as sous chefs, Joshua Crewdson, Keegan Branthwaite and Steven Raaf all coming through Silwood, and arenow the driving force behind  our kitchens, keeping the restaurants at the top of their game.

Silwood Kitchen opened my eyes to cooking and food at a professional level. Ive always been interested in food and used to spend hours watching my mom cook and bake or sit in on Alicias dems as a young boy, but at that stage, being a chef didn’t cross my mind.
Its only when I started studying and learning all the techniques and reasons why and how food reacted in different ways to these methods that I fell in love with cooking. From then on I have never looked back and my desire to learn everything still grows from day to day.

Silwood Kitchen offered me the foundations to reach where I have gone and still want to go. Hard work was up to me.

Silwood Kitchen is a phenomenal establishment full of heritage and professionalism. It was at this great school where my professional culinary journey began and I am endlessly grateful for that. Silwood Kitchen gave me the opportunity to compete in local and international competitions and harnessed me with the tools in which to take home many Chef of The Year and Global Chef titles. It was from this foundation that I have had the opportunity to work in 3 star Michellin restaurants around the World and subsequently be involved with SA Chefs as a director and to travel around the Globe with World Chefs as an international competitor, judge and mentor. These were the footsteps to opening my own business in 2008 and have the ability to make a success of it. Without great lecturers, facilities and support my success’ in life would not have been possible. Silwood Kitchen is truly a World Class establishment which makes individuals stand out and become successful.

I always knew I wanted to work in foods retail and Silwood gave me the opportunity and grounding to get there.