At LCB Ottawa, there are basically 4 pastry chefs (Chef H, CF, N and T) who teach the pastry courses, plus Chefs CP and A from production kitchen, who teach some components in the pastry courses (e.g. Chef CP teaches the Bread Workshop in Intermediate Pastry and Chef A teaches Fruit Carving and so on in Superior Pastry).
Although I know Chefs CP and A from production kitchen, I have not been in any of their classes yet, so in this post, I will just focus on the four pastry chefs (all of whom are French) whose classes I have attended.
Chef H is basically in charge of the Basic Pastry course. I think most, if not all, of my classmates will agree with this: Chef H is an excellent teacher. He always begins each lesson with a lesson plan on the whiteboard, and tells us what he plans to cover in the 3-hour demo class. He also writes down what he expects us to do in the practical class, to help us organise our time in the practical kitchen.
Chef H in a demo class.
I find Chef H scary because he is so strict and does not tolerate any nonsense from anyone, but I really respect him. He maintains discipline in all his classes. If a student is 15 minutes late to class, they don't get to come into the classroom -- he's locked the doors by then, and no amount of pleading works. No one gets away with falling asleep in his demo classes either (you have to be in his class to know what he does to students who fall asleep; I won't discuss it here). The thing is, most of our Basic Pastry demo classes started at 8:15am, and you can imagine a few sleepy heads dozing off every now and then -- even I nodded off briefly in one class, after a particularly late night studying for an upcoming written exam. While Chef H did not punish me during class, I got the feeling he asked me to cut up the demo cake for everyone at the end of class as a way to indicate to me he knew I had nodded off and that I had to make amends for that "sin" (he'd never asked me to cut up any demo cakes before that day, or after that day, for that matter -- he usually goes with the two students he'd unofficially "appointed" as cake servers from day one).
Throughout the term, Chef H gave me encouragement when he thought I needed it (to overcome my fears and disappointments), but he also pushed me to try harder on certain things, and he didn't beat around the bush about it. I think it's his uncanny ability to help all of us develop as pastry students (i.e. his ability to reinforce desirable behaviours and eliminate undesirable behaviours in the pastry kitchen) that makes Chef H a much-loved chef instructor. He has his little idiosyncrasies: he often says things like "I'm a little allergic to X" (in his French accent), where X is the behaviour he does not want to see in the kitchen. It is a most unusual way of warning students not to do something, but I always remember his warnings because of the peculiar way he phrases them. :D
In contrast, Chef CF is not a strict disciplinarian. His classes are highly entertaining because he talks a lot about what he's encountered in real-life kitchens. And he often ends his classes with a Q&A session, where we can ask him all kinds of questions about what we have learnt so far and how to avoid certain pitfalls. What I like about Chef CF is his sharing of the little tricks of the trade for doing certain things or fixing certain mistakes. These are valuable skills that took him years to learn/discover, but he happily shares them with us. I have also found him to be quite patient with students, or at least, with me anyway.
Chef N is one of the younger members of the pastry teaching team. He is not much older than me, I think. There is no doubt he is an extremely talented and creative individual. I've always appreciated how pretty his demo cakes and chocolate showpieces looked, even though there were a couple of demo cakes that didn't turn out as well as he'd like them to be because of (1) lack of time (too many things to cover in a 3-hour class), and/or (2) what looked to me like his nervousness due to the lack of experience with coordinating his demo and baking at the same time.
One of my housemates told me Chef N only started teaching at LCB Ottawa six to nine months ago, so he is a little inexperienced in that area. However, over the course of a term, I have seen him develop as an instructor, and he is improving all the time. He will be the chef in charge of Intermediate Pastry next term (where we will be doing a lot of chocolate work and mousse cakes), so it will be interesting to watch his development as a teacher.
Anyway, I personally think Chef N is the most artistic of the four pastry chefs when it comes to chocolate work. He is also very good at explaining things to you if you have a one-on-one situation. His spoken English fluency is probably the best of the four pastry chefs.
Chef T is one of my favourite chef instructors. Like the other chefs, he is extremely talented, and produces really beautiful cakes/pastries. As I have mentioned before, he speaks very little English, therefore many of us have difficulty communicating with him. We often rely on a few francophone classmates to translate for us. However, Chef T is such a lovely and easy-going person. He is always encouraging -- when he shows you a technique, he does it with a big smile, to make you feel that even the impossible is possible. And he is always teaching us easier or smarter techniques for doing things. He does not actually teach the demo classes, but he does supervise some of the practical classes, where he can give one-on-one help. And it is in the practical classes that I learnt a lot from him. Because he doesn't know how to explain the techniques in English, he simply does a slow-mo demo while you watch, and I find I can pick up the techniques quickly from that.
What LCB Ottawa has is an impressive team of pastry chef instructors, with complementary personalities and teaching styles. I have no regrets in deciding to travel such a long distance to learn from them.
