By Helena Irvine
October 7, 2025
Alumni

The Student: Amber Wen Hsin Liang

Taiwanese-born Amber traded her work as a translator for life in a professional kitchen after training at Leiths. Now working as chef de partie at Bokman, Bristol's buzzy Korean restaurant, she talks about making the leap into cooking, finding her people at culinary school and how knife skills and good time management got her through the door of one of the city's most popular restaurants.

Culinary Diploma graduate Amber graduated from Leiths in March 2025 after completing the Foundation and Intermediate Terms. She now works as chef de partie at Bokman, a popular Korean restaurant in Bristol, but her path to her new position has been long and winding.

Finding the Culinary Diploma

‘I’m from Taiwan. I was born and raised there. Growing up, food has been a really important part of the family. My parents both cook and my mum’s a really good cook.’

At university, where she worked as a translator between Mandarin Chinese and English, she loved hosting friends.

‘They’d come to my apartment and I’d cook for them. It’s always nice when you get people together.

‘I moved to the UK in July last year, but in the summer and winter before that, I went to Leiths to do two short courses.’

The first was a two-week summer course.

‘I did that and I really liked it. The teachers said if you want, you could start a Culinary Diploma in less than a month. But at the time I was only in the UK as a visitor.’

Moving from Taiwan to the UK

After moving to the UK to be with her partner, the course gave her more than culinary skills.

‘At the time, I wasn’t working or part of any group. Going to Leiths meant I gained a really good group of friends. We keep in touch in the group chat all the time. Now everyone’s working in different places, we’re trying to go to everyone’s restaurant every month.’

Finding the right job

After graduation, Amber’s job search, though initially challenging, eventually led her to Bokman.

‘They posted on Instagram, I emailed them and they actually rang me very soon after. After a good trial shift, the chef rang me and was like “If you’re interested, we’d really like to have you.”‘

Reflecting on her culinary training, she says: ‘The knife skills we did at Leiths help me in my job now. And just being used to a smaller station, being organised and multitasking all the time are important. The time management really helped too.’

Now settled at Bokman, she’s found her place. ‘It’s quite a famous and popular place in Bristol. I think now, after a month, I could probably tell people I work at Bokman and they would be impressed.’