Schools are hiring Michelin-starred chefs in new campaign backed by Prue Leith

Schools are hiring Michelin-starred chefs as part of a new campaign backed by Prue Leith.

The initiative aims to lure chefs away from top restaurants to start a second career as the head cook of a school.

Henry Dimbleby, co-founder of the healthy fast-food chain Leon, set up the Chefs in Schools charity as a way to inspire youngsters about the merits cooking with fresh ingredients.

He came up with the idea after Nicole Pisani, the chef from Ottolenghi’s Soho restaurant NOPI, started working at his children’s primary school.

“Nicole told me a story about how she was in NOPI one night and got an incredibly complicated order with ‘leave off this’ and ‘leave off that’ and so on - and the order was from a ten-year-old boy in a suit,” he said.

“She thought there has got to be more than this. Her manager knew she was looking for something with a bit more purpose.”

Mr Dimbleby posted a message on Twitter saying that his children’s school, Gayhurst Community School in Hackney, east London, was looking for a new cook, and Ms Pisani applied.

“She has shown that by using restaurant techniques you can serve better food at a lower cost. You can also teach people about cooking and the food culture and really improve children’s life chances,” Mr Dimbleby said.

Thomasina Miers, co-founder of the Mexican restaurant chain Wahaca, invested £10,000 in the charity, which is backed by a number of celebrity chefs including The Great British Bake Off’s Prue Letith and Ottolenghi.

So far three schools in Hackney, east London have taken on chefs who previously worked at the high-end restaurants Dabbous and the Riding House Café.

“One of the chefs has worked at a Michelin-starred restaurant,” Mr Dimbleby said. “We are looking for chefs who want to do something a bit different”.

Mr Dimbleby, the author of a Government commissioned report on school lunches, said he believes a job as a school cook would appeal to restaurant chefs who are sick of working 100-hour weeks at unsociable hours.

“I imagine we will get a lot of people who have children and want to see them. And people who want to do something that really has a purpose,” he said.

“If you are interested in you £500 polished knife sets and the latest foam this would not be for you.”

 Restaurant chefs who enrol on the Chefs for Schools programme would be given some intensive training before being parachuted into a school.  

“In the old days – and in a number of schools across the UK today - the school cook would come in the back door and leave by the backdoor,” Mr Dimbleby said.

“Our cooks are not only cooking, but they are transforming the schools. They are teaching children to cook, and training their kitchen staff.”

Mr Dimbleby said that so far, two more schools in London have signed up which he hopes will increase to 100 across the country over the next five years.