Bildung of Apprentice Chefs in Professional Kitchen Settings

Based on data collected during six months of anthropological fieldwork, primarily in two professional restaurant kitchens, this presentation seeks to explore the notions of bildung and some forms of social aspects of education and personal development among apprentice chefs in a professional kitchen, as they undertake professional chef’s training.
The presentation is a part of the publication strategy in the two-year Frascati-funded research project titled "Heard that, Chef!" conducted at the VIA Research Centre for Pedagogy and Education at VIA University College, Denmark through the years 2022-2023.
Throughout this project, I engaged in anthropological fieldwork as an engaged, at times full participating anthropologist, while also undertaking the role of a novice apprentice chef, fulfilling the duties and responsibilities expected of a newcomer to the culinary apprenticeship context. My dual roles were of course announced and fully beknown to everyone I was with during the fieldwork.
An earlier publication from the project (Frostholm, 2023), shows that as well as the practical craftmanship behind doing chef’s work, the newcomer apprentice chefs in the kitchens must also be socialised into the social fields of a professional kitchen. Or as John, a highly experienced and awarded chef at the culinary schools puts it:
“Apprenticeship training is about passing on a culture. It can be rather frustrating for some students. Here they go from being boys to becoming adults, as they arrive at school Monday morning. It’s all about: how are you a chef?”
To me, the talk of passing on a culture, and this seeming transition, from boyhood towards adulthood more than hints at a series of analyses on the notions of bildung, that seems at both times highly present and unspoken of within the everyday practices of the young apprentice chefs. With this presentation, I aim to shed some light on exactly that, through close-up registrations and thoroughly written through observations from the empirical data set of the project.
The overall research question is:

How do notions of Bildung appear within in the everyday practice of apprentice chefs in professional kitchen settings?