Palate Culinary Academy, By Rakhee Vaswani

Food has become incredibly trendy in the city. Thanks to the popularity of cooking shows, chefs have become celebrities, and everyone dabbling in the kitchen is an aspiring gourmand. There are small, excellent studios that have mushroomed all over town that help you bring out your inner chef. Plenty of classes and workshops for novice cooks and even ones especially for children along with classes that help with corporate team building exercises. A lot of these classes teach you basics but also highlight various cuisines and helps you play around with flavours. While experimenting in the kitchen is all fun and games, there are also some folks that want to take it a step further and do a more professional culinary course. Sadly for them, there is not much available except a lengthy stint at the culinary school.

Chef Rakhee Vaswani, a well-known personality who appears on different TV shows, has been conducting several culinary workshops at her own Palate Culinary Studio for the past couple of years. She has now launched her very own 1800 sq ft space in Bandra, which she's christened – Palate Culinary Academy, which is best described as a culinary and patisserie entrepreneurial centre. The Academy has tied up with The Confederation Of Tourism And Hospitality in the United Kingdom, and this is their first centre in India. It is the first Academy to give accreditation for a ten week certified course. It is an intensive course with 90 hours of practicals and includes everything from filleting, butchering, knife skills, fermentation and even baking. 

The other course available is a ten-week certified Patisserie Diploma. Here students spend three months learning the ins and outs of baking and confectionary followed by 3 months of an internship in a commercial bakery. There are also a couple of other courses available including a vegetarian culinary one. 

Chef Rakhee herself, who is a culinary expert and a trained Le Cordon Bleu chef, teach most classes. The teaching faculty also includes Chef Kshama Prabhu and Chef Gaurav Gidwani from the famous Bar Stock Exchange as well as Chef Shahi Mahesh who is a culinary teacher with over 25 years of experience. The academy also plans to bring down international chefs as part of their teaching faculty as well as other celebrity chefs to guest lecture.

If you are looking to pursue a career in a professional kitchen or just want a more professional backing to your cooking courses, then the Palate Culinary Academy is a great choice for you.