Internship Diary #25 – Van Vincent Valmocena

Name: Van Vincent Valmocena

Course: GD Batch 17

Branch: Makati

Internship Venue: Indianapolis Marriott Downtown

Van Vincent, a Grand Diploma student from Global Academy Makati, had his internship in one of the finest hotels, Indianapolis Marriott Downtown, where he engaged himself in an aggressive and globally competitive environment.

On his first four months, he was assigned in the Banquet Kitchen, which was in the hot kitchen side and he was able to utilise the skills that he had learned from Global Academy. Conversion factor is one of the things he became very conscious of because they were dealing with bulk numbers of food so his knife skills vastly improved. He also got exposed to working under a different kind of pressure when he had to prepare and cook in front of guests because he had to make sure that he did everything well and fast.

He was moved to one of the outlets – Circle City Bar and Grille, a fine dining style restaurant after he had done a number of tasks in the banquet kitchen. His first training was on the Garde Manger side doing salads, desserts and sandwiches. They did a lot of preps, sauces, stocks, vegetables, starches and a lot more in the said outlet.

After the Circle City Bar and Grille, he was moved to Champions, a sports bar restaurant which do 100-250 covers per hour. It’s a fast-paced restaurant which naturally requires communication due to the right timing of food delivery. He was assigned in all areas from mid station (boiler and griddle), salad station (salad and desserts), fryer station and the grill station. Van Vincent certainly enjoyed rendering a service in this station because more tasks were given to him and thankfully he managed to prepare and send the right food at the right time.

Van Vincent was moved to a Bakeshop as well and was able to apply what he learned in baking in school. Overall, he really enjoyed his internship because he knew this honed his potential and this experience gave him the confidence and determination to pursue his dream of working in a professional kitchen.