Stein leads by example and looks after chefs

Chefs must be given a better deal in order to tackle the lamentable state of recruitment into the industry, Rick Stein told a packed audience of more than 300 delegates.

Opening the conference with his keynote speech, Stein, chef-proprietor of the Seafood Restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall, said it was vital for employers to pay as much as they could for their chefs and to realise that their staff needed a life beyond cooking.

"Our labour charges are 33%, which is quite high for a business with just over 30 bedrooms, but I'm happy with that - we're not losing chefs," he said.

"It is easy to convince people that cooking is a great career, but it helps if the pay is better.

"We also offer reasonable hours - a maximum of 50 hours a week, but that's only when we are pushed. All chefs work four days of split shifts and then have three days off."

Stein suggested the recruitment crisis might be improved by raising the status of chefs. "They should not just be treated as manual labourers," he said. "It should be realised that cooking is the job of an artist and can be intellectually stimulating."

Turning to the general state of seafood cooking around the UK coast, Stein described it as "miserable". He told the conference that during a journey round Britain and Ireland for his most recent TV series, he had been depressed to find so many examples of poorly cooked fish.

"Chefs don't seem to know how to cook a piece of fish simply. Unfortunately too many chefs try to cook like Gordon Ramsay when they haven't got the skill or training to do so."