Executive Chef, ibis Styles Krakow Centrum (Poland)

Michał Kopciński

Michał Kopciński's story

From an early age I reached for my mother’s recipes and tried my hand at them, and I never looked back. There is no room for boredom in this job; every day there are new challenges, so you can try something new and keep learning. A career in hospitality, especially in a restaurant, is a great opportunity for development, that is not specific to a hotel. And on top of that, it provides an exciting opportunity to explore the world, meet new flavours and people.

People have appreciated the role of chef more as chefs have ventured beyond the walls of their kitchens and have become more open to guests. The chef is also manager of the department. He is responsible for organising the work of the team, recruitment, logistics and, most importantly, supervising the outcome of the team’s work. The position involves many responsibilities: quality control, operating the technology that manages kitchen resources, knowledge of recipes, adherence to standards and procedures, and more. These skills cannot be learned in a day, they are acquired over years of work.

Life as a chef is unpredictable and every day brings new challenges. Unexpected situations sometimes awaken dreams we never thought of. The chef is now required to know who from his group is best suited to a particular stretch of work, when to delegate individual cooks and helpers to new tasks, and who is good at a which part of production. The boss needs to verify the abilities and knowledge of his employees and then, by virtue of their talents, attribute each day’s work in his kitchen.

People do not have the wrong idea about professional kitchens – they involve hard work, long hours, and sometimes lots of shouty people, but I think that is partly because the public perceives the profession to be idyllic, thanks to television programmes where everything looks beautiful and cooks itself.

It’s great to be part of this industry because however much you give of yourself, you quickly receive in return; it all depends on how far you want to go and how much you can give.

  • Michał Kopciński
  • Executive Chef
  • ibis Styles Krakow Centrum (Poland)

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