Short Biography of Stephan Will

 

 

 

 

I was born in 1972 in the small town of Halberstadt in the Harz area of Germany. During my childhood I became increasingly interested in Food and the cooking of it, so I started to work in my school holidays in various restaurants and decided that this would be my future profession.

After finishing my apprentice ship as a fully qualified Chef and the fall of the wall I moved to the Black Forest area of Germany to get my first experiences in other regional foods as well as the first exposure to international cuisine. As the Black forest Area is close to France and Switzerland and I spend many days off there absorbing the local foods and atmosphere.

By then I decided to see more of the world and go further a field in my profession than just Germany and subsequently moved to England and spend the next12 years there.

In my first establishment the Portman Hotel in London while still working as a kitchen chef I meet the pastry chef there then Martin Chiffers, who became my mentor as well as personal friend and introduced me to the finer points of pastry in particular the working with cooked sugar.

After spending nearly 2 years there and entering my first competition in England I decided to dedicate my work to the making of pastry.

 I then joined the Pastry Team at Harrods and absolved in my spare time an Advanced Diploma in Culinary Arts at Slough University under Prof John Hubert. I still continued to enter competitions and achieved various awards including the William Page Challenger Award for best junior pastry and being part of the British Team of Chefs in Limerick Ireland.

After my time there I got the opportunity to work with one of the best Pastry chefs in the Country, Robert Mey at the Hyatt Carlton Tower until his retirement and became for a short time the Acting Pastry Chef of the newly opened Grissini restaurant, modeled on the same name restaurant in Hong Kong.

Having by then honed my skills I took on the challenge to work at the Savoy Hotel in London were I spend nearly 2 years and left to be part of the opening team of the Great Eastern Hotel.

At the Great Eastern Hotel as the Assistant Pastry Chef I was able to concentrate on training and developing our staff as well as my self over the 3 years spend there .

In 2003 with the birth of my Daughter I decided to move again, this time to Japan as my wife is Japanese.

Having worked at the Tokyo American Club, a private members club with International as well as Japanese clientele I found Japan to be a very challenging and interesting place with a great culture around food and eating. Which inspired me to formulate my own personal Mission statement.

 

“I am an executive pastry chef  with extensive knowledge in managing and training of employees who’s first language is not English. I have learned my profession by working over 10 years in some world-class establishments in London .I am keen competitor who always seeks new challenges for him self and likes to create valuable and unique offerings for the customers.

I am looking for an environment that enables me to grow both professional and personal by using my skills and knowledge as well as educating and training future pastry chefs”