- Cinnamon Lakeside’s culinary maestro talks 30 years of hospitality
Being a chef typically evokes romantic images of experimenting with food and masterfully creating unique dishes that wow crowds. While this is true to an extent, there is a lot more that goes into being a chef, especially as you grow within the hospitality field and move up the ranks.
Brunch met with the Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo’s Executive Chef Ashan Liyanage, the prolific culinary maestro who celebrates thirty years in hospitality this year.
Over the course of his career, Ashan has worked at the Amaya Kuda-Rah Maldives, Ritz-Carlton, Jumeirah Beach, Dubai, the Forte Grand, Dubai (now known as Dubai Meridien), The Kingsbury Hotel Colombo, and several properties within the Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts group including the Bentota Beach Hotel (now Cinnamon Bentota Beach) and the Cinnamon Grand Colombo.
Being an executive chef
Ashan began his career in hospitality at the age of 17 in 1992 by enrolling in hotel school and then working within the hotel industry – a pathway he chose because of what he had seen of the lifestyle and the freedom it offered. “You can be creative and have an outlet to express that creativity, unlike with a structured eight-to-five,” Ashan explained, noting that this career path was not for the lighthearted and required a lot of passion and immense commitment.
Looking back, Ashan explained that hotel school was a valuable boost, but that such an education was no longer strictly necessary, provided you had talent and commitment, as the food industry was one that was constantly evolving, and it was those traits that would help you succeed the most, especially as you climb the ladder.
In September 2021, Ashan took over as Cinnamon Lakeside Colombo’s Executive Chef. But what does this mean? What does an executive chef do?
“It’s more to do with management and planning around a kitchen and its operations,” the Chef explained, adding that he was responsible for managing and planning all of the hotel’s food and beverage operations, from its various restaurants and bars, to its banquet operations, linking with the various culinary and management teams in charge of each area to ensure things were running smoothly and efficiently.
“As you move up in the field, your actual cooking reduces,” Ashan said, describing how much physical cooking versus managing an executive chef did. “I still enjoy cooking, and whenever possible, I like to cook, but as an Executive Chef, it’s mostly planning and motivating and guiding your team to perform their best.”
What’s a day in his life like? In a word, long. Ashan begins his days briefing the senior team on what will be happening that day, resolving any operational issues. On top of this are management meetings, day-to-day meetings, and discussing function requirements, all while still connecting with customers and keeping a physical eye of the different outlets within the hotel to spot any issues with quality.
“The biggest difference in being an executive chef is that you have limited frontline responsibility when it comes to cooking. Your responsibilities are in the management of the whole operation and in making sure your team and staff are happy. You can’t achieve anything without the right team. This is very important. The culture and values that Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts offer makes it a very easy environment to work in,” Ashan said.
“There is a misconception around being a chef that I think TV has created by making it out to be a very easy life, but in reality, you have to maintain a huge balance between your work and family life,” Ashan shared. “The hours are long, and when others are enjoying themselves, you’re working. People tend to think that this is a nice life, and it is a good environment, but it’s a difficult balance between work and family, especially as you get older.”
The biggest challenges of being a chef in 2022
The year 2022 has brought with it unprecedented challenges, and for Ashan, as with chefs all across the industry, the key challenge is making it through these difficult times. “The cost and lack of ingredients are the biggest issues, as is keeping your employees happy and retaining them,” Ashan said. “In terms of costs, we have to see what other options we have available and how we can improve them to the quality we have and need to maintain. With staff, on the other hand, there’s not much you can do beyond having regular discussions, seeing what their issues are and how you can resolve them. You shouldn’t allow their issues to fester inside. Money and growth are very important to people at the end of the day, and we have to find a way to balance all of these things equally.”
In the short-term, Ashan shared that in order to make it through, what the industry needed to focus on was promoting local products, which was difficult. In the hotel trade, a lot of products will still need to be imported to maintain quality for tourists, but where creative chefs can make a difference is by incorporating more local items into Western-influenced dishes and creating quality fusion offerings that can be offered to tourists in such a way that we can rely less on imports while also maintaining quality.
Of course, Ashan shared that across the board, all chefs and others in the food industry would need to take a hard look at their expenses and how to reduce them, and look at minimising waste and maximising productivity.
Brunch also asked the Chef what trends he envisions becoming most popular and how he sees the local food industry changing as a result of the crisis and the troubles it has brought with it. The most defining trend to expect is a shift towards local produce, as a necessity to start with, but then because we have got used to it and because it is a chance to boost and develop the local industry which will, in turn, strengthen the country. An example he shared was cheese – while local cheese isn’t necessarily the best in terms of quality from an international perspective, with things as they are, importing cheese will become difficult and also cost-prohibitive, which will see a greater reliance on local cheeses, forcing local manufacturers to innovate and improve to provide better quality products.
Being a chef is hard but worth it
While being a chef is somewhat less idealistic than often portrayed in the media, Ashan stressed that it is an immensely rewarding career path to take in life. “It’s hard work and you must give it a 150% to achieve success but that success is worth it as you grow and reach higher levels in the industry.”
Ashan also noted that being a chef, particularly within the hospitality industry, is also lucrative, but as with any industry, it depends on working with the right companies that value your skills and what you bring to the table. “My advice to aspiring chefs is to have discipline, be committed, and don’t run behind money now. Get the basics and learn your foundation. When you have that foundation it is easy to grow and become stable. Commitment is the most important. This is a great industry to build a career in and gain recognition, but work with the right company.”
Expanding on what he said earlier about hotel school training providing a valuable boost to young chefs, Ashan said that in terms of skill and talent, hotel school is a good thing to have, but not essential. At Cinnamon Hotels and Resorts, for example, he shared that all trainees are rotated through different areas of the kitchen every three months for them to not only build a solid skill base across all forms and styles of cooking but also to discover what they are most comfortable with themselves in terms of cooking. Where hotel school training does become important is at the top levels of the field, because this is where you become responsible for managing kitchens and teams, and for that, you need the kind of training and academic qualifications that hotel school provides.
“There is no one place or way to start,” Ashan noted. “In this industry, you need to have passion, dedication, attention to detail, and consistency, and with those qualities, you can achieve anything.”
