ICE - The Institute of Culinary Excellence - RTO 40748

Great outing with our Cert IV and Diploma Students yesterday. Thank you to Executive Chef Helen Thorington from the Emporium Hotel, for sharing your experience writing rosters for over 60 kitchen staff! Plus also thank you to ex ICE teacher Sebastien Legendre, owner of the sensational new C’est Le Gateaux at Southbank, for talking to us all about opening up a brand new business from the ground up! The students really enjoyed the day out and gained a lot.

Wow! What another awesome day with our students! Great day with our Cert 1 Hospitality trainees and Stage 1 apprentice chefs at the Food & Hospitality Queensland trade show.
A great opportunity to learn, grow and build connections. Plus our fearless leader Alison Taafe presents with apprentice of the year 2023 winner Aidan Whittle on the UNOX AUS stand!

Congratulations to ICE apprentice Robert John Mackay who qualified as a chef this week under the guidance of Chef Hoan at Bisou Bisou. Well done, we are all very proud of you! Good luck for your culinary future young man.

Early start this morning as we get an opportunity from BUSY At Work to find out all the latest information on how we can support our employers, apprentices and trainees more.

What a wonderful event at ICE - The Institute of Culinary Excellence - RTO 40748 today for Umar’s Seafood Sharing Event. Nearly 200 guests, seafood producers and ICE students and mentor chefs enjoyed the day. Thanks everyone for coming and making the day a resounding success! Plus the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Mark Furner MP came too!

Good luck to all our ICE ‘Skilling Queenslanders for Work’ students who are now doing their 2 weeks work experience as part of their Certificate II in Commercial Cookery. You’ve all done brilliantly so far and I’m sure you’ll love some of the fabulous partner restaurants and cafes you will be working in. Fingers crossed we can find you all permanent jobs at the end of this!

Day 2 of the Careers and Employment Expo in Brisbane today! Lots of visitors to our stand and loads of people around on a rainy Saturday. Thank you Kathryn from QTIC and Tayla from Eat for your Life. Also big thanks to my friend Kerrie for giving up her Saturday to come and help too!

What a day! 1st day of the Careers Expo at the Brisbane Convention Centre. Today we spoke with some of the 7000 school students who came through the doors. There are some very keen budding chefs out there!!
Thank you to the awesome Eat For Your Life trainee Tayla for sharing the hospitality love. Come by and visit Alison and Tayla tomorrow and grab some information about starting a career in food and hospitality.
Thank you to Queensland Tourism Industry Council for hosting us on their stand.

Wow! What a day! Our certificate II cookery students from Mt Gravatt Community Centre Skilling Queenslanders for work program held their first ever full high tea function.
Over 30 guests enjoyed tasty treats, coffee and tea prepared by our wonderful students.
What a buzz!!

Super awesome view out the office window today!

Congratulations to Harmony ! Another fantastic apprentice supported by the fantastic team at the Katarzyna group. Harmony, we are so proud to see your hard work and tenacity pay off. It has been such an honour to see you grow and be part of your training! Wishing you all the best for a very successful future.

Truffle hunting in the Tuscan woods last night with Mario and his 2 specialist dogs, Zara and Eva! We had to grab them before the dogs ate them! We found loads… Any chef would have been as excited as me, I’m sure. It was a truly magical night with the sun setting over the vines and our pockets full of truffles 😊

What a fabulous week in Italy this week with ICE Student of the Year Aidan Whittle. After an amazing experience in Padova at the UNOX factory tour with the incredible Wayne Viles and UNOX Australia it was off to Verona for the VinItaly Festival for the day! Next it was off to Venice and then the moment I had been waiting for all my life; the journey on The Orient Express!

The incredible Karlee Towning presented a fabulous cake masterclass to our students tonight. Checkout those gorgeous cakes! Thankyou Karlee for spending some time with our ICE family today

Wow, what a fabulous day at the headquarters of UNOX in Padua, Italy with Wayne Viles and the team. We saw everything right down to the smallest screw to the biggest 10 tray oven being made piece by piece. It was a truly wonderful experience and Aidan, Laura and myself all thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks very much to Wayne and UNOX Italy…

ICE Student of the Year Aidan Whittle, stages at the 3 Michelin starred ‘The Ledbury’ in London this week! He must have done well as they said he could go back anytime! Well done Aidan…

We love our students getting exposure to all aspects of industry and sometimes this includes the experience of dining out!
The Fish Girl, treated two of our apprentices, who won the team challenge from our last seafood sharing event, to dinner at Honto on Monday night. Thankyou Umar for giving our students this experience!

Pie and mash and a pint of Guinness in Portobello Road, London tonight! Cheers from Aidan Whittle (ICE Student of the Year) and I 😊

Wow, can you believe that if you are a student at ICE you can expect to bump into superstars like Adriano Zumbo! We were so lucky to have him teach a patisserie class at ICE on Monday night. Everyone was super impressed and enjoyed the class so much. Watch this space for more classes with this pastry legend.

Adriano Zumbo is in the house at ICE today! We are sooo lucky to have this Masterchef and Patisserie legend teaching our ICE students today! Thanks to Milos and the Unox Australia team for helping to make this happen too 😊

Thank you so much to my good friend Jerome Dalton for allowing us to take our 14 first year ICE Apprentices to visit him at Dalton Hospitality and CJs Pasta yesterday. Everyone enjoyed watching the pasta demo and fabulous focaccia being made. We all loved eating it too! Plus we loved the caviar and the Saison smallgood samples too. Thanks Jerome you’re a legend in this industry!

Congratulations to one of our ICE superstar staff members Rachel Simon today. Rachel won ‘The Best of the Best’ Certificate III Commercial Cookery student of the year in 2023. Today we all helped her celebrate International Women’s Day with all the girls at ICE (minus Danielle Dixon who was away today!). Thanks go to Jeffrey R Gear and George Hill from Australian Institute of Technical Chefs for hosting the awards.

Happy International Women’s Day 2024

Congratulations to ICE Apprentice Harry Smith who qualified as a chef today under the superb guidance of Executive Chef Joey Goldman and Head Chef Ruben Orderud at Brewdog in Brisbane. Well done Harry we are all very proud of you!

Look out it’s double trouble!!
We are super proud of both of these great young chefs! Congratulations to Henry Bibby who started as Cert II VET in schools student before moving on to a school based apprenticeship and now a qualified chef! What an awesome start to a great career.
Also huge congratulations to Baylee Williams! It has been a privilege to see you grow in confidence and become one of the team at Blackbird
We are very proud of both of you!
Thankyou to Jake, Tom and the entire Blackbird Bar & Restaurant Brisbane team that have supported and mentored both of these young chefs!