The Director of our Executing Education Centre, Dominique Brunet, and Maxime Moïse, Chef & Strategic Partnerships Manager of ALLIANCE, visited ACAM, a culinary arts school in Guatemala, partner of the Institut Paul Bocuse.
From left to right: Dominique Brunet, Maxime Moïse, Monica Reyna (ACAM Technical Director)
The links between our two schools were created about ten years ago. Since then, we have been supporting ACAM in its pedagogical approach by helping it to set up a 2-year training programme which welcomes around 40 students each year.
Dominique and Maxime attended, with 3 Chefs from the Guatemalan school, the final exam of the students of the class of 2022 but also of those of 2020 and 2021, which had been delayed because of the COVID-19 epidemic. They evaluated them on French recipes and techniques and gave them their certification.
The students were first subjected to a written theoric test, then to a cooking test (3 hours) and finally to a pastry test (2 hours 30 minutes) during which they were asked to write down their recipe, realise it, then present and serve their dishes.
This partnership represents a unique opportunity for our school to open up to the world by introducing our chefs to a new culture, new products and, in general, a new approach for cooking. Today, the representatives of our two establishments wish to deepen this exchange in order to :
- Increase the skills of ACAM’s Chefs
- Provide on-site training programmes by our Chefs
- Offer training in our premises in Écully for ACAM Chefs
This next step will allow our trainers to measure the impact of French cuisine around the world and to learn how to adapt our culinary arts to local species and products.