How to Become a Chef in NZ (Without Culinary School)

 


I've already written about whether culinary school is worth the money. Short version: it can help, but it's not the only door in. Plenty of chefs I've worked alongside — some of the best ones — never set foot in a culinary classroom.

Here's the actual path, if school isn't the one you're taking.

Step 1: Get in, any way you can

Nobody starts as a chef. You start as a kitchen hand or commis, washing, prepping, watching. The title doesn't matter in year one. Getting inside a working kitchen does.

Apply everywhere. Cafes, pubs, hotel kitchens, catering companies. Don't hold out for the fine-dining dream job on day one — you're not ready for it yet, and neither is your CV.

Step 2: Show up early, leave late, ask questions

This sounds simple because it is. Kitchens run on trust before they run on talent. The person who turns up fifteen minutes early and stays to help clean down gets taught things the person who clocks in at the buzzer never will.

Ask a chef to show you a technique during a quiet moment and most will. Ask during service and you'll get ignored, and you'll deserve it.

Step 3: Get on the tools, not just in the building

Being present isn't the same as learning. Push to get hands-on — chopping, plating, running a section, even a small one. The gap between "the kid who preps veg" and "the kid we trust with a section" is where real progress happens.

Step 4: Consider a formal qualification later, on the job

You don't need culinary school to start, but a lot of chefs pick up an NZQA-recognised qualification through an apprenticeship-style pathway once they're already working — earning while they learn instead of paying while they learn. It's a very different financial equation, and for a lot of people, a smarter one.

Step 5: Move when you've learned what you can

Staying too long in one kitchen out of loyalty or comfort will slow you down. Once you've absorbed what a kitchen can teach you, move to the next one and stretch yourself again. Every good chef I know has a CV that looks like a tour, not a single stop.

Step 6: Expect it to take years, not months

There's no shortcut from commis to head chef. Anyone selling you one is selling you something. It typically takes several years of real kitchen time, across a few different sections and venues, before "chef" stops being a job title and starts being an accurate description of what you actually do.

The real requirement

Technique can be taught. What can't be taught easily is the willingness to keep showing up on the nights you don't want to. That's the actual qualification. Everything else is just time.

— The Chef

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