Culinary Academy is a 7-day high-intensity professional cooking course. By Friday you will have cooked roughly 21 full guest-style services. That is the point.
What the curriculum covers
The week is built around five core areas:
Kitchen fundamentals: knife work, prep speed, organisation, heat and seasoning, building flavour.
The backbone: stocks, mother sauces, emulsions, doughs, slow-cooks for collagen. Master five and the rest of cooking gets faster, cheaper, more consistent.
Service flow at pace: three meals a day, plated and timed, every day, with curveballs.
Dietary fluency: vegetarian (V), vegan (VE), gluten-free (GF), dairy-free (DF), pescatarian (pesc), nut-free, and allergies, treated as the equal of any other plate.
Cooking with what is in front of you: limited supply, day-fresh produce, local ingredients, small stores. The magician's eye.
Theme days
After framework and provisioning on Saturday, each day from Sunday through Wednesday has a theme:
Sunday: backbone day. Stocks, mother sauces, emulsions, doughs.
Monday: composition day. Balance, contrast, the five finishers, plate-up feedback every service.
Tuesday: slow and fast. Collagen-rich slow cooks, pan technique drills, pan sauces from drippings.
Wednesday: magician day. A constrained ingredient list, dietary curveballs, cooking from what is in front of you.
Trial-day rehearsal
Thursday is a trial-day rehearsal. Each student gets an individual brief in the morning (number of guests, dietaries, budget, time to deliver) and three to four hours to plan, prep, and deliver lunch end to end. The instructor watches as a hiring chef would. Detailed feedback after. In the evening, each student plates their signature dish for the table.
Showcase and close
Friday is the showcase brunch combining the week's strongest moments, individual debrief with the instructor (with a CV and chef-profile review for career-track graduates), and certificates. Course officially ends 15:00.
Land-based versus yacht-based
The same curriculum runs in both editions:
Land-based at Fort George, Vis Island, Croatia: a professional restaurant kitchen with full equipment. Slightly heavier emphasis on technique and finish.
Yacht-based, currently in the British Virgin Islands: a working yacht galley with a skipper, sailing motion, and tight stowage. Slightly heavier emphasis on adaptability.
What you leave with
By the end of the week you can plan menus that hold under real charter or service pressure, shop and prep efficiently, execute multiple services in a row without dropping standards, handle dietary requirements professionally, and plate at a level that signals intent. The skills travel: yachts, private villas, chalets, restaurants, your own dinner table.
This is not an introduction to cooking. It is the level above. If you arrive with the basics already in your hands (knife work, basic sauces, comfort with timing), the week lifts you toward private chef standards. If you arrive without them, the week is harder than it needs to be.