What I have, I share

What I have, I share. If not now, when? — the question this page begins with.

The knowledge that was passed to me — by mentors I honour privately, by twelve years alongside the luxury houses that shaped my brand work — is not mine to keep. The teaching is conservation: of indigenous gastronomy, of brand-building craft, of the cultural heritage that runs through both. It is also recognition: practitioners whose industry experience equals or exceeds the credentialed path, but who never had the chance for formal certification, deserve to come into the classroom and have what they already know recognised at last.

What the F&B industry asks for and rarely receives is a foundation in brand-building and the marketing of its own identity. That is the contribution I am positioned to make. East and West, past and future — and the bridge that runs between them. That bridge is the teaching.

The classroom

The institutional partner is Taylor’s Culinary Institute, part of Taylor’s University, where I have taught as adjunct lecturer since 2021. In June 2026 that relationship was renewed as an appointment to Adjunct Professor at the Culinary Institute, for the term 2026 to 2028. The appointment sits within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Leisure Management, whose Hospitality and Leisure Management discipline QS places among the world’s top thirty in 2026. The classroom of practice is Truffles Restaurant, on campus. The remit runs across the kitchen and the academy around it: lectures in kitchen theory and practice on the undergraduate programmes, a hand in course and curriculum design and in how students are assessed, short courses and public seminars developed and led, and the industry links that connect the school to the houses and the wider profession.

What drew me to TCI is that the institution believes in the same continuing professional pathway I do. There is a programme for practitioners whose industry experience deserves formal recognition, regardless of whether the certified pathway was open to them in their early years. That conviction — that experience earned in the kitchen counts as scholarship — is the partnership’s foundation, and mine.

Knowledge before technique

The classroom at its best is the place where a student starts to understand why knowledge matters, not just how technique works.

One student was failing — repeatedly — because the way the curriculum was being absorbed left him with techniques but no understanding of why they were the right techniques. Observation and replication are how kitchens train, and they are necessary. But they are not enough. A dish that does not carry knowledge is a dish the diner forgets the moment the plate is cleared. So I shared with him the difference between a mind that has been nourished — that has read the why behind every gesture — and a hand that has only watched. The mind that knows can translate. The dish that comes from a translated mind sparks the diner’s own mind. Memory forms. The teaching enters the room.

Tenacity is what carried him through. Tenacity has carried me too — it is one of the few inheritances I trust.

What teaching refuses

What teaching refuses is laziness. I do not share shortcuts to recipes or to techniques. I encourage failure — the kind that comes from trying, not from indifference. I encourage discovery. I encourage the hand finding what the book cannot teach.

Practice is the mother of all skills — practised wisely, mindfully, and with knowledge held alongside the hand. That is what teaching asks of the student. It is also what teaching demands of the teacher.

Mentees as friends

Mentees are friends. They confide in me beyond the kitchen — about hard seasons, uncertain decisions, the doubts that visit anyone serious about a craft. I share my own. The teaching at depth is not curriculum; it is companionship under load.

Master Jeff Chew has reminded me: be resolute, and be ready to change course when unpredictability prevails. That is the disposition I pass on. Resolute for the day’s work. Ready to bend when the conditions ask it. The discipline holds, but it does not cling.