Robin(22)

Cooking is my life. After vocational college in Delft I knew I wanted more than Dutch hospitality. French cuisine — the foundation of everything we know in gastronomy — I wanted to learn from the inside. Through a teacher with contacts in Nantes I got a place as an apprenti (apprentice) at a one-Michelin-star restaurant. The contrat d'apprentissage is a French employment contract where you work and study simultaneously.

As an apprenti you earn 67% of the SMIC (minimum wage) — that's about €1,170 gross per month. It's not much, but your employer pays your training, social charges and you build up rights for unemployment and pension. The qualification is a CAP Cuisine (certificat d'aptitude professionnelle), which takes two years. Two days a week I'm at the CFA (centre de formation d'apprentis), three days I work in the restaurant.

The kitchen of a Michelin-starred restaurant in France is a different world from what I knew in the Netherlands. The brigade is hierarchical: chef, sous-chef, chef de partie, commis, apprenti. You start at the bottom and work your way up. The first months I did nothing but cut vegetables (la mise en place), reduce sauces and clean. But every dish that leaves the pass is a work of art — the precision, the presentation, the flavors. I learn every day.

Nantes is a surprisingly great city for a young chef. It's France's sixth city, has a vibrant food scene and is close to the Atlantic coast — fresh fish and fruits de mer in abundance. The market halls are my playground: oysters from Cancale, beurre demi-sel from Brittany, sel de Guérande. The cost of living is lower than Paris or Lyon: my room in a colocation (shared apartment) costs €380 per month.

The CAF was crucial for my budget. As an apprenti you're entitled to APL — housing benefit. I receive €150 per month, bringing my rent to €230. I also get a prime d'activité — a supplementary income allowance for low earners — of €100 per month. Together with my wages I end up with about €1,200 net. Not much, but in Nantes that's enough to live well.

My goal is to progress after my CAP to chef de partie and eventually open my own restaurant — perhaps in France, perhaps back in the Netherlands with everything I've learned here. French cuisine has taught me discipline, respect for ingredients and passion for the craft. My advice to young chefs: go to France. It's tough, you work long days and the hierarchy is strict. But if you love cooking, there's no better school in the world.