Member Article

Come Dine With Me? – Four Colleges Identify Best Practice

Four North East Colleges are working in collaboration to give Level 1 Hospitality and Catering students a ‘live experience’ of cooking and serving a three course meal with the opportunity to find out how it is done at the other colleges.

TyneMet, Northumberland, Sunderland and South Tyneside Colleges have organised a diary of ‘Fine Dining’ experiences. Each college will host the students from the other colleges, treating them to a ‘Fine Dining’ experience so that they can identify best practices and showcase their own hospitality and catering facilities.

TyneMet College were the first to host 36 staff and students from the other three colleges and although very nervous the Level 1 Hospitality and Catering students performed with professionalism and expertise.

Supported by their catering teachers the 12 students prepared cooked and served a mouth-watering menu. The visitors had three choices of starter and main and two choices of dessert.

The starters on offer were; Chilli and red pepper soup with herb croutons, or Filo pastry baskets with garlic mushrooms, or Honeydew melon fan with a raspberry coulis. The main courses on offer were; Roast chicken with stuffing and game chips, or Steamed salmon with a prawn and citrus sauce, or Beef casserole with herb dumplings the vegetarian option was Mediterranean vegetable curry with braised rice. The deserts on offer were Bannoffee cheesecake or Fresh fruit salad served in a brandy snap basket.

The TyneMet students are now looking forward to travelling to the other three colleges where they will be able to reflect on their performance whilst also gaining an insight in to how the students from the other colleges perform and also compare the catering facilities.

Joanne Hewison, Head of Service and Business Enterprises, TyneMet College, said:

“I was extremely proud of all of our students; the food was excellently prepared and tasted delicious. The front of house students were smart, attentive and performed their duties in a very professional manner.

“At TyneMet we have a fully functioning Bistro and coffee shop that is open to the public and state of the art kitchens that students are taught in. Our staff are all industry trained and are committed to making sure that the students get the best teaching and learning experience whilst at college.

“We are really pleased to be part of this collaboration project which will prove to be extremely beneficial to the students from all four colleges.

“The evaluation and feedback gained from each ‘Fine Dining’ experience will be invaluable to developing hospitality and catering courses and identifying best practices that can be incorporated in to the delivery of the training will ensure that the students have the up to date skills to help them to progress to higher hospitality and catering courses or to work in industry.”

For more information about hospitality and catering courses at TyneMet College, call and speak to a student advisor on 0191 229 5000, email enquiries@tynemet.ac.uk or visit www.tynemet.ac.uk/catering

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Lisa Dawson .