Chef Magazine for Thailand December/January | Page 50

Introducing a new approach to cooking can pose a challenge,
especially when having to build the kitchen team from the
ground up. “One of the biggest challenges was the fact that
maybe others are not as careful as you’d hope them to be; it’s
normal for people to want to take shortcuts, especially when
you’re making dessert, because everything requires so much
time and accuracy,” Champ said. “As a leader in the kitchen,
it’s important to teach your team to step up their game, you
have to teach them why just good is not enough and show
them an example of something perfectly executed. Otherwise,
they’ll see no point of improving.”
For Champ, learning to trust the team is also a big part in
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making the kitchen work. “In the end, you can’t really taste
everything all the time, so it’s a lot of letting go and putting
trust in your team. I’m really lucky that some of the team
members have been with us since the opening of our shop.”
Some recipes also require components that need to be made
ahead of time, so Champ has to adjust to the new way of
planning as well. “A lot of mousses and crust recipes you need
to freeze or bake ahead of time, so it really taught me how to
plan ahead more than when I was in a traditional kitchen,”
When it comes to ingredients, Champ takes a less-is-more
approach, but quality always comes first. “We use mostly
imported ingredients because if you want to make French