Visiting Canadian Chefs

CESO (Canadian Executive Service Organization)teamed up with IDEA this February to help improve the food and service of IDEA’s various restaurant businesses.  Altogether the two Garden Cafes and Dao Diamond Hotel employ 14 deaf  cooks and bakers.  Some of these cooks have been working with us for almost 30 years and although they are quite proficient, there still is a great need to upgrade their knowledge and to keep our menus fresh in order to continue attracting the customers.  For this reason Dennis Drake put in an application with CESO for two well qualified Canadian chefs to come to Bohol to provide training for our staff.

The two chefs that volunteer turned out to both be retired award winning professionals who possess amazing amounts of knowledge and even more so, both are seasoned educators having taught for years in prestigious cooking schools in various countries around the word.  We at IDEA felt so fortunate to have been assigned such wonderfully qualified men who had such big hearts and were willing to share their skills with our Deaf.

Chef Bryan with the IDEA Pension House Staff 

Chef Ralph with the Garden Cafe Tagbilaran Staff

Chef Bryan Fordham was assigned in our operation at the IDEA Pension House / Garden Cafe Jagna, Bohol.  Chef Bryan’s specialty is pastries, cakes, and breads but also worked extensively with the manager in helping solve some of the operational problems.  Chef Ralph Graham was assigned in Dao Diamond Hotel and Garden Cafe, Tagbilaran City, Bohol.  His specialties were more on main dishes and sauces.  He also worked extensively with the management on helping them with some of the issues of kitchen operations and menu selections.

It was such a great pleasure having these two men with us for three weeks.  Although they really only scratched the surface in that short time, they really stirred the pot so to speak and got our cooks and bakers looking at new possibilities in types of food and revitalized the IDEA staff.  It was a good thing.

A big thank you to Chef Bryan and Chef Ralph of giving so freely of your time and talents and also to Mr. Matt Navalta (Philippines Country Director for CESO) and the citizens of Canada for making this assignment possible.