Learn to cook.
Learn yourself.
Our non-profit volunteer program offers real kitchen training in a working vegan restaurant, a close-knit community, and a foundation in conscious plant-based cooking you will carry for life.
A real kitchen. A real education.
“We don’t teach you to follow recipes. We teach you to understand food: its seasons, its logic, its relationship to the body and the person preparing it.”
Since 2016, Simone’s Kitchen has welcomed over 350 volunteers from 45 nationalities through our non-profit training school, the Good Food Institute. We are not a catering college. We are something rarer: a real working restaurant where you learn by doing. Every evening service, every dish that leaves the pass.
Our four-course dinner menu rotates every three weeks, celebrating a different world cuisine through a fully plant-based, organic lens. As a volunteer, you move through every stage of that menu, from mise en place and preparation to plating and service, building a genuine, rounded foundation in vegan fine-dining cookery.
We ask for a minimum stay of two weeks and a maximum of twelve. Two weeks is enough to find your rhythm; four carries you through a complete menu cycle from first prep to last service. Twelve weeks means you will move through four complete cycles, watching the kitchen reinvent itself each time from a different cuisine, different ingredients, a different creative challenge. The longer you stay, the deeper that understanding goes.
We keep the group small, two or three volunteers at a time, so that every person receives genuine attention and mentorship, not just a station to stand at. Past volunteers have come from across Europe and beyond, from many different backgrounds and life stages. What unites them is curiosity: about food, about cooking, and about themselves.
Every head chef this kitchen has ever had began as a volunteer here, including Davide, who runs it now. That is not coincidence. It is the foundation of how we work and how we treat the people who join us.
Your full package
This is a volunteer placement, not paid employment. But it is far from nothing. In exchange for your five shifts a week you receive a real package of support, designed so that your time here is sustainable and the learning continues long after you leave.
Accommodation
Your own private room in the building above the restaurant, guaranteed year-round. Two of the rooms are on the top floor and get warm during the handful of genuinely hot weeks Belgium gets each summer. Fans are provided. All rooms are cleaned and prepared for your arrival.
Weekly expenses
A flat reimbursement of €30 per week to cover personal costs. We usually pay it at the end of your stay, and you can ask for it earlier if you would rather. A formal volunteer arrangement under Belgian law with GFI VZW, signed in the Hub before you travel.
All meals
Full use of the kitchen and food stock for breakfast and lunch. Dinner is yours too. Eat from the restaurant menu, the same four courses our guests are eating, whenever suits you. You do not have to wait for service to finish, and you are not obliged to eat the menu every night.
Insurance
Covered by our volunteer insurance policy (AXA 010.730.464.669) for the full duration of your placement. Details are included in your volunteer agreement on arrival.
Two full days off
Two full days off every week, guaranteed. Normally Tuesday and Wednesday. On the weeks a new menu starts your two days move, but they are always two.
Simone’s Kitchen Hub, yours to keep
Every volunteer receives access to the Simone’s Kitchen Hub before they arrive: your shift pattern, the house guidelines, what food is available to you, and our complete recipe and menu library. Complete your agreed stay and that access stays with you for good. The kitchen teaches you to cook; the Hub means you can still make the menu a year later.
The structure of your stay
From your first day to your last, the program is designed to build genuine skill and confidence, not just exposure to a professional kitchen.
Arrive and settle in
You join a small team of two or three volunteers, from a wide range of countries and backgrounds. We take time at the start to help you understand the rhythm of the kitchen and the community before service begins.
Enter the current menu cycle
Wherever you join the three-week rotation, you will work through every element of the current four-course menu, learning the preparation, seasoning decisions and plating from the inside out.
Work across the full kitchen
We do not place volunteers in one station and leave them there. Over your stay you rotate through prep, cooking and service, building a complete picture of how a restaurant actually functions.
Experience a menu change
Every three weeks the entire menu changes cuisine. Participating in that creative reinvention, from concept to execution, is one of the most valuable things the program offers. Stay twelve weeks and you will see it happen four times.
Typical working week
Preparation shift
Day off
Two full days off every week, guaranteed. Normally Tuesday and Wednesday. On the weeks a new menu starts there is a preparation shift on the Wednesday evening, so that week your two days move and a shift comes off elsewhere. Evening shifts start at 17:00, an hour before the first guests. We deliberately do not put an end time on them: some nights finish early and some run later. To request a specific day off, put it in through the Hub, as early as you can.
People who started exactly where you are
Every head chef this kitchen has ever had began as a volunteer here. That is not a coincidence. It is the foundation of how we work and how we treat the people who join us.
Davide
A Master of Law by training, a chef by calling. Davide brings international vegan fine-dining experience from retreats and hotels across India, Vietnam, Portugal, and Austria. His path to leading our kitchen is driven by a singular passion: mastering the art of plant-based cuisine.
Alistair
Alistair began as a volunteer from England and never quite left. He oversees operations and makes sure the community we have built, of volunteers, team and guests, stays exactly that: a community.
The Good Food Institute exists because we believe that learning to cook well, with intention and understanding, changes how you relate to food, to your body, and to other people.
Plant-based cookery is not a restriction. It is an invitation to cook more creatively, more seasonally, and more consciously than most professional training ever allows.
Food is constitutional. What we eat, how we prepare it, and who we share it with are not incidental choices. They are expressions of who we are. A kitchen is one of the finest classrooms for self-knowledge that exists. That is why we do not just train cooks. We train people who understand why they cook the way they do.
The Apprenticeship
Some people arrive curious and leave wanting the whole thing: not just how to cook the menu, but how the restaurant actually runs. That is what the Apprenticeship is for. Three months, one apprentice at a time, with the business half included and your own operational platform to take with you. Every chef who has ever run this kitchen started on a placement like this one.
Ready to apply?
Tell us a little about yourself: your background, what draws you to plant-based cooking, and when you are hoping to join us. Places are limited to two or three volunteers at a time, so we review applications on a rolling basis.
Minimum 2 weeks · maximum 12 weeks
No prior professional experience required
English working language
Prefer to get in touch directly? Email
s@simoneskitchen.com
or call +32 472 19 16 14