How to get a stage in a Michelin starred kitchen, and the other routes into a professional kitchen: apprenticeships by country, culinary school, and starting as a commis

The question I am asked most often by young cooks is not which culinary school to choose. It is how to get into a particular kitchen, usually one with a star or three, for long enough to learn from the person at the pass. The answer in most of the world is a stage, and the stage has rules that nobody writes down. This page writes them down, then sets the stage beside the other routes into a professional kitchen: the state apprenticeships that most European cooks still take, culinary school, and the oldest route of all, which is to be hired at the bottom and stay. The chefs in my books came by every one of them.

What a stage is, and how it differs from an internship and an externship

A stage (pronounced the French way) is a short period of work in another chef’s kitchen, taken to learn how that kitchen does things. The person doing it is a stagiaire. MasterClass’s primer draws the useful distinction between two kinds: an inexperienced cook who serves as a stagiaire for a few months or longer in the hope of a permanent paid job, and an experienced cook who stages for a day or a week to learn a technique or as a tryout for a position. Both are, in the article’s words, “generally unpaid.”

An internship is the formal cousin. It is usually arranged through a school or an employer’s program, has a defined length and a written agreement, and it sits inside whatever labor law applies to trainees where you are. Le Cordon Bleu London, for instance, describes diploma programs that run to twelve or fifteen months “if combined with an internship”. An externship is the American culinary school’s term for the placement built into the curriculum itself: the Institute of Culinary Education’s career programs end in one and its career office was commended for its externship placements, and the Auguste Escoffier School builds a six week externship into its Boulder culinary diploma. The externship is credit bearing and the school helps place you. The stage is none of those things. You find it yourself, the kitchen owes you nothing, and the only credential it gives is the line on your résumé.

In The Luxury of Attention I set the chef’s stagiaire years, the long apprentice stint a young cook serves, often unpaid or near unpaid, in the kitchens of established chefs, beside the hotel school path the hoteliers of the last generation followed. Both rest on the same premise: that mastery requires years under a master who can see what the apprentice cannot. The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2

How to get a stage

Kitchens rarely advertise stages. The chefs interviewed by The Caterer in 2011, among them Jason Atherton, who staged at El Bulli, describe the same sequence. Choose the restaurant first, and choose it for its chef, since the point of a stage is the person at the pass; one of them suggests a smaller kitchen, where a stagiaire is given more to do, and another advises building classical basics before chasing an avant garde kitchen. Then talk to your own head chef, who may know someone, and if not, write a polite letter to the head chef of the kitchen you want. MasterClass adds the modern channels: a personal introduction, a visit in person, or a message on social media, and in every case an explanation of what draws you to that restaurant along with your qualifications.

What you send should be short. Who you are, where you have worked and under whom, the dates you can offer, the fact that you understand the terms, and one honest sentence about why this kitchen. Chefs read hundreds of these. The ones that get answered are specific about the restaurant and modest about the writer.

What kitchens look for, by the account of the chefs in The Caterer, is not technique. It is behavior. Atherton’s four tips were “keep your mouth shut, be the first in the kitchen and the last to leave, work extremely hard and do as you’re told”, and his summary of the stagiaire’s standing is the sentence every young cook should take with them: “You’re a guest in their kitchen not an employee.” Take notes when the kitchen allows it, and write a recipe down once you have made it so you never ask twice. Clean down with the kitchen porters at the end of service. On length, Atherton said “It’s hard to put a time cap on it”, and the article notes that El Bulli’s minimum was a season; at the other end, a British cook described an unpaid year at Michel Guérard’s three star Les Prés d’Eugénie, saved for in advance the way one might save for university.

The chefs in my books confirm the pattern from the inside. Aaron Silverman’s month at 2941 Restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, during a college winter break, was spent torching tomatoes, picking herbs and learning to slice smoked salmon, and it changed his life. David Kinch describes his stages in order, and they read like a map of the European kitchens of the early 1990s.

“Following that, I staged with Marc Meneau at a three Michelin-starred restaurant called L’Espérance, in Germany at a now-closed two Michelin-starred restaurant called Schweizer Stuben, and at Akelarre in San Sebastián, which had two Michelin stars at the time.” David Kinch, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

The unpaid norm, and what Noma showed

Stages are unpaid, and the fine dining economy has leaned on that for a long time. Vice reported in January 2023 that when Noma created a three month internship program in 2018, its first intake put about sixty cooks in the kitchen, half of them unpaid, and quoted a cook who trained at Astrid y Gastón in Lima saying that about three quarters of the staff there were unpaid stagiaires like him. In late 2022, after years of criticism, Noma began paying its interns. About three months later, René Redzepi announced that Noma would end regular service at the end of 2024 and become a food laboratory. His explanation, as Vice reported it: “Financially and emotionally, as an employer and as a human being, it just doesn’t work.” Read that two ways. The most influential restaurant of its generation could not pay everyone in its kitchen and keep serving dinner, which tells you what the unpaid stage had been subsidizing. And a chef at the top of the trade decided the subsidy was no longer acceptable, which tells you where the norm is heading.

Other starred kitchens have made the apprenticeship a program rather than a favor. El Celler de Can Roca in Girona told BBVA in 2017 that more than 2,000 apprentices had passed through its kitchens, and the Roca brothers’ tour with the bank selected about fifteen hospitality students in each Spanish city it visited, three of whom, two cooks and one waiter, won a four month funded placement in Girona. That is the direction a stage should be moving: selected, funded, and finite.

The apprenticeships by country

In much of Europe the normal route into a kitchen is neither culinary school nor an unpaid stage. It is a paid apprenticeship with a training contract, a day or so a week at a vocational school, and a state recognized qualification at the end. These are the routes that produced most of the British starred chefs in Chef’s Pencil’s research and a good share of the French and German ones.

France: the CAP cuisine

The Certificat d’Aptitude Professionnelle in cuisine is the foundation qualification of French cooking, a national diploma of the Ministry of Education at level 3 of the French framework. Onisep, the state careers service, describes it as a two year course after the troisième, the last year of collège, taken either at a lycée professionnel with fourteen weeks of workplace training, or by apprenticeship, alternating between an employer and a training center. It can be done in one year by someone who already holds another CAP. From the CAP, a cook can continue to the Bac Pro or, if trained by apprenticeship, to the Brevet Professionnel, each two years, or to a one year Certificat de Spécialisation. FERRANDI Paris teaches it alongside its higher programs, and it is the first rung of the public hotel lycée system that figures so heavily in the French Michelin study.

Germany: Koch and Köchin

The German cook’s apprenticeship is the dual system at its purest. As aubi plus describes it, the Ausbildung “dauert in der Regel drei Jahre” and alternates between the training business, which teaches the practical work, and the Berufsschule, which teaches theory. The final examination is set by the chamber of industry and commerce: written papers in technology, goods management and economics and social studies, and a practical in which the candidate cooks a three course menu for six, with the list of ingredients supplied four weeks ahead and four hours on the day until the first course must be served. After about three years of further experience a Koch can sit the IHK examination for Küchenmeister, the master’s qualification that carries the right to run a kitchen and to train apprentices. Sven Elverfeld, who held three stars at Aqua in Wolfsburg for a quarter century, came through this system twice, first as a confectioner and then as a chef.

“I was fortunate to be the only apprentice in training for all three years. My superior was quite young himself and he really encouraged me onward.” Sven Elverfeld, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Switzerland: Koch EFZ

Switzerland’s version is the Koch or Köchin EFZ, the Eidgenössisches Fähigkeitszeugnis or federal certificate of competence. The Stiftung Arbeitskette’s information sheet gives the structure: three years, at least thirty five weeks a year in the Lehrbetrieb, which may be a restaurant, a hotel, a hospital or a care home, one day a week at the Berufsfachschule in a year round business or two block courses of four and five weeks a year in a seasonal one, plus inter company courses. Students with strong grades can take the Berufsmaturität alongside, which opens the universities of applied sciences. The ladder continues to Chefkoch or Chefköchin with federal diploma, through the Berufsprüfung, and to the diploma of Küchenchef through the higher professional examination. A two year Küchenangestellte EBA exists as a related, shorter occupation. This is the route most Swiss cooks take, including many who later run hotel kitchens; Culinary Arts Academy Switzerland’s English language diplomas sit beside it rather than replacing it.

United Kingdom: Commis Chef Level 2 and Chef de Partie Level 3

Britain replaced its old catering qualifications with employer designed apprenticeship standards. The Commis Chef Level 2 standard, as the University of Suffolk describes it, takes about twelve months, requires the apprentice to be employed for at least thirty hours a week, is taught one day a week at college, and ends in an end point assessment delivered by City and Guilds; apprentices without a pass in English and maths must reach functional skills in both. From there the routes are Chef de Partie Level 3 or Senior Chef Production Cookery Level 3. The Chef de Partie Level 3 standard, as City College Norwich teaches it, takes two years, with one college day a week and a mentor in the workplace, an end point assessment made of a knowledge test, an observation with questions and a professional discussion, and a GCSE grade 4 in maths and English to enter. The college lists head chef, development chef and executive chef among the roles it leads to. Westminster Kingsway in London teaches the diploma route alongside these.

United States: ProStart and the industry apprenticeship

The United States has no national cook’s apprenticeship on the European model. What it has at school level is ProStart, a two year culinary arts and restaurant management program for high school students run by the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation through the state restaurant associations, reaching about 130,000 students in more than 1,700 schools. Its Certificate of Achievement counts toward the foundation’s apprenticeship program and toward credit and scholarships at more than sixty colleges. Beyond that, the American route into a kitchen without school is the one described next.

Starting as a commis without school

The oldest route is to be hired at the bottom and stay. Chan Yan Tak, the first Chinese chef to hold three Michelin stars, began at thirteen when his father died and he became the family’s breadwinner. His first job, at a famous Wan Chai restaurant, was as a trainee: cleaning, preparing ingredients, assisting chefs at banquets in private homes, sometimes until two in the morning.

“Traditionally, in a Chinese kitchen you only learn by observing other senior chefs cook while you continue doing your assigned tasks. How much you learn depends on how much you can absorb while multi-tasking.” Chan Yan Tak, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Rodolfo Guzmán of Boragó was hired as a dishwasher at a café in Charleston, South Carolina, at nineteen and was cooking all of its pastry by the time he left. The hoteliers in my books tell the same story from the other side of the pass. Kai Speth, who went on to run The Reverie Saigon, began as a chef apprentice at the Steigenberger Hotel in Bad Kreuznach and then as a commis de cuisine at Landhaus Scherrer, a one star restaurant in Hamburg. Tom Roelens, later general manager of Four Seasons Resort Lanaʻi, entered the industry at fourteen washing dishes and then as a commis de rang in starred restaurants in Belgium and France. Krister Svensson of The St. Regis Bangkok started as a steward in a Stockholm restaurant.

“I learned early on that starting from the bottom was incredibly important to understanding roles you would otherwise be oblivious to later on. I learned to appreciate that every job was important and valued, no matter how small it may seem.” Krister Svensson, in A Wealth of Insight (2017)

The commis route has one advantage over every other on this page: it pays from the first day. Its cost is time. Nobody corrects your knife work in a classroom, and the first years can be spent on one station. The chefs who took it say the station was the education.

What the chefs say about the routes

Scott Jones, chef de cuisine of Menton in Boston when Le Cordon Bleu closed its American schools in 2015, told NPR that with graduates “you have to start at the bottom like anyone else”, that “You learn infinitely more in a restaurant like this than you would anywhere else virtually”, and that “The idea that anyone would want to come into this industry with debt is ludicrous.” Yuu Shimano of the Michelin starred Restaurant Yuu in New York told Chef’s Pencil in October 2025 that “formal training is not the only path”, and Eric Wolitzky, executive pastry chef of Fifth Group Restaurants in Atlanta, said in the same article that what matters more is “working under the right chefs who are willing to teach and mentor.” Redzepi’s verdict on the unpaid model is above.

The chefs in my books make the case for the kitchen as plainly. Guy Savoy, whose apprenticeship with the Troisgros brothers in Roanne he counts among the most important moments of his career, told me:

“The best way to hone your skillset is through apprenticeships. The acquisition of these precise crafts demands daily practice.” Guy Savoy, in A Wealth of Insight (2019)

Emmanuel Stroobant of Saint Pierre in Singapore began in a two star restaurant where “part of my training was being apprenticed out to different restaurants to gain experience”, the stage built into the job. Richard Ekkebus of Amber began with an apprenticeship under two starred Dutch chefs before Gagnaire, Passard and Savoy. Guzmán remembers the apprentice’s hardest lesson: a young chef de cuisine told him no question was a silly question, he asked all of them for months until she told him never to ask again, and “From that point on, I learned by observing.” And Pedro Subijana of Akelarre, who did go to school, draws the line where most of them draw it: “Only after school when you join the ranks of a kitchen, put your skills to work and learn from everyone around you will you begin to absorb true knowledge.”

How to decide between the routes

Four questions settle most cases. What can you afford? A state apprenticeship pays you; culinary school charges you; a stage costs you rent and wages for its length. If you cannot carry debt, the apprenticeship or the commis job comes first and the stage comes later, when you have something to offer a kitchen beyond enthusiasm. Where do you want to work? In France, Germany, Switzerland and Britain, the national apprenticeship is the credential employers read first, and a foreigner who takes one is taken seriously. In the United States, where no such ladder exists, school and the commis route are the real choices, and 39 percent of the country’s starred chefs took the second. How much structure do you need? Chef’s Pencil’s summary of the trade’s view is fair: school gives structure, fundamentals and connections at a cost; the kitchen gives income and resilience along a slower and less orderly path. And who will correct you? This is the question that matters most and the one students ask least. A stage in a kitchen where nobody speaks to you teaches less than a commis job under a chef who does.

In The Luxury of Attention the second chapter, The Apprenticeship, argues that these routes are variations on one thing. “No one in this book taught themselves. Every master in these pages is the product of another master.” The chapter’s advice to anyone tempted by a shortcut, the celebrity chef short course or the early title, is the advice of every chef I have interviewed: “Take the longer road. Find the master. Submit to the wrong section. Receive the correction.” The Luxury of Attention (2026), Chapter 2 Whichever door you choose, that is what is waiting on the other side of it.

Sources

• MasterClass, “Stagiaire explained”
• The Caterer, “All the world’s a stage”, 9 May 2011
• Vice, “‘Begging to work there for free’: fine dining wouldn’t exist without unpaid labour”, January 2023
• BBVA, “El Celler de Can Roca, 2.000 becarios después”, 23 February 2017
• Le Cordon Bleu London, “Is culinary school worth it?”
• Institute of Culinary Education, History
• Wikipedia, Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts
• Onisep, CAP cuisine
• aubi plus, Koch/Köchin Ausbildung und Beruf
• Stiftung Arbeitskette, Infoblatt Koch EFZ
• University of Suffolk, Commis Chef Level 2 standard
• City College Norwich, Chef de Partie Apprenticeship Level 3 standard
• NRAEF, ProStart brochure
• NPR, Le Cordon Bleu closures transcript with chef Scott Jones, 2015
• Chef’s Pencil, “Is culinary school worth it?”, 10 October 2025
• Chef’s Pencil, “61% of America’s Michelin starred chefs are culinary school alumni”, 16 March 2026
• Chef’s Pencil, “How France trains Michelin starred chefs”, 28 May 2026