Travel Opportunities for Chefs
When you think about career choices that lead to international travel, there are certain high-powered jobs that come to mind: business executives, CEOs, politicians, celebrities. What you may not realize is that a career as a professional chef can also be a ticket to world travel, and continuing your education toward a culinary career can put you in that airline seat with the executives and rock stars.
Executive chefs at the best restaurants are responsible for developing new menus, so they must be up-to-the-minute on food trends and be experienced in the subtleties of tastes in international dishes. It's not unusual to find head chefs spending time in Japan to sample the world's freshest salmon, or in Barcelona to get a taste of authentic recipes for paella. Some chefs are even sent abroad to search out exotic ingredients for the restaurant's menu, taste-testing anything from organic meats to rare types of olives and placing orders for the very best.
Just because you've trained as a top chef, don't think your education ends there. The best chefs are always learning. Owners of high-end restaurants want their chefs to have skills they can brag about, and are often willing to send their employees abroad to acquire them. You don't even have to be the head chef to be sent on a learning course. You could find yourself on a wine tour of Italy or in a pastry-making class in Paris, all at your company's expense.
Education works both ways, and if you're a trained chef, you could easily be in demand as a culinary teacher in other states and countries. What's your specialty? You could be called on to share that expertise in pastry decorating or sauce making in seminars and classes. Mastering just one skill very well could make you desirable as the one to train culinary students in that very skill.
While you don't have to be rich and famous to travel as a chef, don't forget that the rich and famous often travel with their own chefs. Wealthy families who spend whole summers overseas want to bring their favorite chefs along with them. Music and film celebrities are often highly demanding about their diets, and that means that when they go on a tour, their chef goes too. Jet-setters hire skilled professionals; just one more reason culinary training pays off.
A career as a chef is a chance to experience the tastes of the world. The bottom line is, if you're trained as a professional chef, you'll want a passport. With so many opportunities to travel, you'll be using it as much as you use your favorite knives.
