Vincenzo Berloco

Driven by need of change and new challenges i decided to leave the Pizzeria to experience bigger range of cuisines and flavours, which eventually brought me at 5 Hertford Street, private members club offering a variety of culinary solutions to appeal the most requiring of the costumers and inspire any semi-skilled cooker to become a better one.

Here i sharpened and refined my knife skills, mastering some and acquiring new ones; as well as station management, overseeing a designated section such as starters, fish and also meat and pasta, working closely with colleagues to contribute to recipes creation; inventory and stock management, ensuring adequate supplies, monitoring portioning and waste control to adhere to budgetary constraints; enforce strict health and hygiene standards ensuring the kitchen operates in compliance with the relevant legislation; assist in training and mentoring junior chefs, creating the basis for a cooperative and efficient kitchen environment.

At Remo's i finally had the chance to prove myself as a leader, running an independent section of kitchen formed of 3 members; counting amongst my duties, menu development , basing my choices on seasonal trends and in-house preferences, taste and presentation consistency assured by a rigid application of safety norms and regulations during all stages of food processing; training new staff ensuring up to standard attitude and techniques; coordinate work flow with front-of- house and main kitchen throughout a 350 covers service; manage stock levels, supplier relationships and items selection.

Looking for a different environment i decided to join the freshly formed team of The Princess Royal, gastro-pub in Notting Hill.

When on prep, i mainly focused in bakery goods such as sourdough bread and highly hydrated focaccias, developing recipes and methods for the lightest and most intense flavour.

When in service, i mainly localized at the pass, managing the flow of tickets, ensuring a fast but clean working experience for all crew members and costumers.

In Homeslice Neals Yard i joined a fast-paced environment, serving freshly made and wood oven baked 20inches pizzas. As Sous chef I mainly focused on leading the service, organising rotas, dealing with orders and in case directly with suppliers, basically acting as Head Chef when required, with the purpose of maintaining continuity of service and quality.

Once in Mamma Dough I could approach this new to me delivery only environment and thanks to my positive attitude, motivation and skills I was soon made Sous Chef, therefore asked to ensure the teamwork efficiency throughout the whole working period, maintaining exceptional quality standards even and especially under pressure.

As required by the Head Chef I was providing training, cleanings and kitchen weekly rotas, managing orders and check lists, food rotation and staff meetings.

Along with what concerned pizza, in this cocktail bar and restaurant I was as well organizing and leading the hot section, from prep and service to stock and supplying, providing training and deep cleaning rotas, in order to comply the highest standard of food quality and work flow.

Here I found the pleasure to get back to the team-crazy-work having the chance of co-working with e large amount of chefs of all kinds with a totally different level of experience and a totally different method of work that i would define straight, fast and clean, method that i have to say absolutely necessary in order to be able to survive the eight hundred covers per night. I've been always looking for a nice spacious and welcoming display where was possible to work in contact with the customers even to suggest them and the 300 seats restaurant offered me, as second pizza chef, the opportunity to try once more myself under an high level of stress, willing to perfect everysingle particular, being into the team as we were one person only and sometimes even becoming the leader of it.

Located in the main centre of the City, Bufi is been a big chance for me to improve my knowledge as solo-worker in a busy environment as I was completely on charge of the shop, starting from the daily and fresh preparation of the dough and toppings to the main organisation of the floor such as bookings and orders, dealing than with all sorts of supplier in order to get every single time the best products and doing so to guarantee an excellent presentation either for the food and the place itself.

Basically here I performed in all of the Pizza Chef's duties working mainly alone and managing the section as the only responsible in charge.

In Franco Manca i had myfirst meeting in my working experience with pizza napoletana and fivehundred degrees wood oven. In Franco Manca I became familiar with all the health safety guidelines, required for using every kind of machine and to handle the food on sanitized workstation. Mine main activities concerned preparing the workstation for the service, keeping it clean at all times, ensuring all food preparation areas were maintained in a clean and tidy condition, making sure the kitchen and pizza section equipment were properly stored, preparing the ingredients for the senior pizza Chef and the Head Chef, maintaining high standard of hygiene, dealing with the dough and bread making and taking care of deliveries and stock rotation.

In this small bakery I increased my knowledge about the dough making, mixing different types of flour to obtain more or less strong kind of dough, tries after tries to achieve the right elasticity and lightness with sourdough, dry or brewer's yeast, leaving the dough from 24 to 120 hour rising.

Just arrived in London I found in Ponti's the opportunity to improve my skills, joining a totally different kind of work, more intensive and a bit more difficult because of the language but for this reason I felt the needs to focus myself, avoiding any distraction to learn as fast as I could to face all kinds of tressful situation. Here thanks to an experienced team of Chefs I learned all the basics about the shelf-life , how to match boards and knives following the colour coding system to prevent any kinds of contaminations between all kinds of food and I also practiced with knives in order to find the safest way to use them.

In this new location during the first months I used to be an apprentice pizza Chef. All my tasks included the full opening of the section, delivery checking, refrigerators temperature checking in the morning and before closing, check all the properly or not labelled food and possible contaminations, the cleaning of the section. During the service my role was about the correct seasoning of the pizza before and after cooking , following the standard quantity for each topping for every pizza in the faster and cleaner way; taking care of the oven temperature and the proper baking of the dough in order to obtain the perfect taste. In the last period I accurately learned how to use the slicer and how to open the pizza dough, moving from the apprentice position to the main pizza Chef, starting to manage the section as second Pizza Chef.

As pizza chef helper I introduced myself in this new field, having my first approach with catering. In this bakery- restaurant, where all kinds of courses were homemade, especially pasta, bread and pizza dough, I basically learned how to set the whole section, from the fresh making of toppings to the correct and gradual lighting of the wood fire oven and also how to move during the service in quiet and busy moments in teamwork or alone.