Mengen trains chefs for the finest in world

BOLU - Anadolu Agency

AA Photos

Abant İzzet Baysal University’s (AIBU) Mengen Cookery School, a vocational high school in the northwestern province of Bolu’s Mengen district, trains chefs in the art of Ottoman and world cuisines. 

Director of the school, Associated Professor Nihal Doğan, said the school was opened in 1997 and specialized in training academic and administrative staff for the food sector. 

She said the school currently has 201 students enrolled for the 2015-2016 education year, adding, “Since the opening of the school, 500 chefs were trained and they have been successfully representing Turkish cuisine as well as world cuisine all around the world.” 

According to Doğan, the school’s purpose is to train professional cuisine chefs through whom to introduce Turkish food culture, along with the tradition and heritage of Ottoman palace cuisine to the world.  The school also aims to increase the exportation of Turkish products, through the appraisal of Turkish products by students.


Full capacity every year

She said graduates of the school work in many countries of the world. “The graduates are working in luxurious hotels in many successful positions. They are everywhere, from Singapore to Germany, from the United States to the Far East,” Doğan said. 

Doğan said students learned about fine cold appetizers from both the Ottoman and world cuisines, in addition to cuisine customs, culture and communication and the art of gastronomy. 

During the two year program, the “students take theoretical classes for the first year. The second year is more focused on practice. At the end of the first year, they have an internship that lasts 60 days. They intern in great hotels or various areas of the tourism sector. Successful ones continue to the second year and are trained as chefs.”

Doğan said many are interested in the school, as the school reaches full capacity every year. 


No unemployment 

She added that all graduates have become employed and some even found their job during their internship. Though the school mostly has male students as of now, “we support female students to become chefs,” she said. In fact, “the number of females in the program has increased this year.”   

Fatih Çetintaş, a second year student, said he chose the school in Mengen because of its teaching staff. 

“We are practice during classes. We have chance to intern at exceptional places all around the globe. Mengen is developing and our school draws great interest,” he said. 

Another student, Okan Özcan, defined Mengen as the “castle” of gastronomy world, saying, “Unemployment is out of question after graduation.”