Do I need cooking experience to join Galley Academy?
No prior professional cooking experience is required. Galley Academy is open to anyone with a genuine desire to learn.
What is required
What matters is not where you start but how you show up. Specifically:
An ability to follow instruction under pressure
A willingness to receive honest feedback and apply it immediately
The stamina to be on your feet and working from early morning until after dinner service, every day
How to prepare
Students who arrive with the basics already in their hands (a feel for a knife, an understanding of heat, a vocabulary for the kitchen) spend the week building real technique rather than catching up on fundamentals. Your prep guide covers exactly what to practise before you arrive.
Recommended practice before the course:
Knife skills: julienne and dice until cuts are consistent
Pasta cooked al dente and finished in the pan with sauce
Rice by the absorption method
Potatoes three ways: boiled, roasted, mashed
Eggs five ways: boiled, fried, scrambled, poached, omelette
One tomato sauce made from scratch
One slow-cook recipe completed at home
Will there be other beginners?
Almost certainly. In any given week your kitchen might include someone who has never worked a professional service alongside someone with years of catering experience. Mixed groups learn faster because everyone teaches everyone.
Already have solid cooking experience?
If you have a professional or semi-professional kitchen background and are looking for more advanced training, Culinary Academy may be a better fit. It covers professional knife work, stocks, sauces, full-service cooking, and menu planning at a higher technical level, and runs a career placement track for graduates seeking paid chef work after the course.
Questions? Get in touch at info@quarterdeck.co
QD Team