Mentorship in the Kitchen: What I Learned from Teaching 7,000 Chefs

The first class at Red Dish Chronicles had three students. Three nervous, eager, slightly terrified people who had decided to bet on themselves and on me — a chef with big dreams and a small kitchen in Lagos. I remember every single one of their faces.

Today, we have graduated over 7,000 chefs across three campuses. Some of them run their own restaurants. Some work in five-star hotels across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. Some have become food entrepreneurs, caterers, food stylists, and culinary consultants. A few have even become instructors at RDC, which is perhaps the thing I am most proud of.

But the number that matters most to me is not 7,000. It is one. Because mentorship — real mentorship — happens one conversation, one correction, one encouragement at a time.

What Mentorship Actually Looks Like

People have a romantic idea of mentorship. They picture a wise elder dispensing profound wisdom while the young apprentice nods reverently. The reality is messier. Mentorship in a professional kitchen looks like standing next to a student at 6 AM, watching them butcher a chicken for the fifteenth time, and saying: "Better. But your angle is still off. Again."

It looks like having a difficult conversation with a talented student who keeps showing up late, because you know that talent without discipline is worthless in this industry. It looks like staying an extra hour after class because someone is struggling with a technique and you can see in their eyes that they are about to give up.

The Three Things Every Student Needs

After thirteen years, I have distilled mentorship down to three essentials:

First, honesty. I will never tell a student their food is good when it is not. That is not kindness — it is cruelty, because it sends them into a professional kitchen unprepared. At RDC, we praise effort and correct execution. Always in that order, but always both.

Second, exposure. This is why our diploma programmes include internships and externships at premium establishments. You can learn technique in a classroom, but you learn professionalism, speed, and resilience on a real service line. Our partnerships with hotels like Hilton and InterContinental exist specifically to give our students exposure to world-class kitchen operations.

Third, belief. Every student who walks into RDC is carrying some version of doubt. Can I really do this? Am I good enough? Is this a real career? Part of my job — and the job of every instructor at RDC — is to answer those questions with a resounding yes, backed up by the training and support to make it true.

The Ripple Effect

Here is what I have learned about mentorship that nobody tells you: it multiplies. When you invest in one student properly, they go on to mentor others. I have watched RDC graduates become head chefs who train their own junior cooks using the same principles they learned from us. The twelve students from that first class have collectively influenced hundreds of careers. That is the real legacy of a culinary school — not the building, not the equipment, but the chain of knowledge and care that passes from one generation of chefs to the next.

Why I Still Teach

People ask me why I still spend time in the classroom when I have restaurants to run, books to write, and a television show to judge. The answer is simple: teaching is where I feel most alive. There is no feeling in the world like watching a student nail a technique they have been struggling with for weeks. That moment when their eyes light up and they realise they can actually do this — that is worth more than any Michelin star.

To every aspiring chef reading this: find a mentor. Not just someone who can teach you to cook, but someone who will push you, challenge you, and believe in you even when you do not believe in yourself. And if you are looking for that kind of environment, you know where to find us.

Chef Stone is the founder of Red Dish Chronicles Culinary School, The Burgundy, and Truck Central. He is the author of five cookbooks and currently serves as a judge on MasterChef Nigeria.