The Graduate: Helena Irvine

In this cosy corner of The Leiths Letter, I’ll be taking a walk down all the avenues life as a Leiths graduate can take you along. But first, I thought it might be useful to tell you a bit more about me and my cohort and what we’ve been up to since graduating. And it’s pretty cool.

From the same sea of nervously smiling first day Culinary Diploma students as me, we’ve got a salad dressing startup founder called Tess. We’ve got Ava working as a Junior Sous at Noble Rot, Thor at Lyle’s (a world top 40 restaurant) and Hannah who is Head Chef at Borough Market’s much celebrated Padella, making kilos of filled pasta every day. Izzie is nailing it with queues around the corner working at Maya’s Bakehouse. Bex is a Senior Sous at Forza Win and recently returned to Leiths as a guest demonstrator. Ceci is a Junior Sous at Rocket, the luxury London caterer. A few of my friends now work as assistants styling food on shoots for major supermarkets and national newspapers, working on cookbooks and commercial shoots alike (think, Ottolenghi one day, Heinz the next). Lucy, our Student of the Year, even worked on a Disney set designing a faux croquembouche. There are supper club hosts, social media stars and food system researchers championing seasonality. There’s Helena (not me) who is recipe testing over at BBC Good Food, there are tens of other brilliant foodie success stories and then there’s me, coming to you live from my home in Berkshire.

I’m an English Lit grad who decided to retrain as a chef and chose Leiths. In my time during and after the Culinary Diploma, I’ve had some incredible experiences. For a number of years, I recipe tested for and worked as personal assistant to Olia Hercules. After busy weeks training at Leiths, I did a double shift on Saturdays for 2 Michelin star chef Phil Howard washing salad leaves, grating parmesan and working on the cold starter section in his neighbourhood bistro Church Road. After graduating, I made more burrata starters in Soho institution Andrew Edmunds than anyone ever should.

Since then, I’ve gone freelance. I’ve worked on projects for The Guardian’s Feast magazine and BBC Good Food, worked on a TV set with Gordon Ramsay, head-cheffed weddings and been abroad with private clients. Now, since a very exciting email landed in my inbox just a couple of months ago, I have the pleasure of walking you through life before, during and after Leiths for some of our incredible graduates. Let’s go and have a look.

Helena Irvine

@helenajaneirvine