Learn the kitchen.
Learn the business.
Three months minimum, one apprentice at a time, taught by a head chef who came through this programme himself. You leave able to cook the menu, cost it, order for it and run a service, with your own operational platform to take wherever you go next.
Not a new idea.
A formalised one.
“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 we have trained people in this kitchen and watched them become head chefs. Not as a programme with a name and a page, just as something that kept happening, because a restaurant that rebuilds its entire menu every three weeks turns out to be an unusually good place to learn.
Every head chef Simone’s Kitchen has ever had came through this kitchen as a volunteer, including Davide, who runs it now and who will teach you. More than 350 people from 45 nationalities have cooked here across nine years.
What is new is the structure: a defined three months, a curriculum, weekly one-to-one teaching, and something concrete to show at the end. Everything else has been happening for a decade.
This is for you if you intend to work in or open a plant-based kitchen: changing careers into food, finishing an online culinary programme with a certificate and no kitchen hours, or already running something you want to convert to plant-based. It is not for you if free accommodation is in your top three reasons: that is our Kitchen Placement, which is genuinely good and takes people from two weeks.
We take one apprentice at a time. That is the whole point. You get taught, properly, by the person running the kitchen.
Your full package
This is a volunteer placement, not paid employment, and the hours are the same as any other volunteer here: five shifts a week, twenty-five hours, two full days off. An apprenticeship is not more work. It is the same work, structured, with teaching added on top.
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.
Your own Hub instance
Every apprentice leaves with their own instance of the Simone’s Kitchen Hub: the recipe library, the menu and costing structures, the training material and the operational back office, yours to adapt for whatever you do next. Not an export that goes stale in a file somewhere; a live instance, kept updated. Free for your first year after completion, then at cost.
Three months, four menus,
the whole operation
Three months is long enough to stop being a pair of hands and start being someone who could run the place. The structure below is what makes that difference.
A structured kitchen rotation
Preparation, larder, hot section, the pass, and leading service. Each one is signed off by Davide before you move on. Not whatever needs doing today.
Menu creation
Full participation in at least three complete menu changes: concept, research, testing, costing, plating design, execution. This is the thing nobody else offers, and it is only possible because we genuinely rebuild the menu every three weeks.
The business half
Ordering and suppliers, stock control, portion and menu costing, waste, covers and margin, and how a non-profit food operation actually works. This is what separates can cook from could run this, and it is the half no culinary course teaches.
A weekly one-to-one
A standing session every week with Davide or with Alistair on back office, menu planning and operating the restaurant. Scheduled, not incidental. You finish when you can run a service unsupervised, cost a menu, and place a week’s order, not when three months have elapsed.
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.
Taught by someone
who did this first
Davide came to Simone’s Kitchen as a volunteer and now runs the kitchen. He is the person you will work beside every shift and the person who teaches you. Alistair founded the Institute and arrived as a volunteer too; he takes the weekly session on the business side.
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.
Ready to apply?
Tell us where you are heading and why this is the right three months for it. We take one apprentice at a time and interview everyone properly before deciding.
There is no cost. We are formalising something we have done informally for nine years, and the first apprentices are helping us get the structure right, and in exchange we ask for honest feedback as you go. The programme will be priced later. It will not be priced for you.
Three months minimum
No formal qualification required: intent and reliability matter more
English working language
Prefer to get in touch directly? Email
s@simoneskitchen.com
or call +32 472 19 16 14