Choice of Cooking Schools in Pretoria

Choice of Cooking Schools in Pretoria

Pretoria is known as the Jacaranda City because of the proliferation of long-established Jacaranda trees that line the city streets and bloom in abundance in beautiful, sub-tropical gardens every October. At this time of year, Pretoria is carpeted in purple. It is the season during which the trees put on their amazing late spring and early summer display, announcing that the hot summer months lie ahead.

Regardless of the season or summer heat, it is never too hot in the kitchen for students at Prue Leith Chefs Academy, a leader amongst South African cooking schools, situated near Pretoria. Our professionally trained, qualified graduates are perfectly at ease, comfortable, and confident in the kitchen, because their training environments – our three Prue Leith kitchens – are world-class facilities.

Prue Leith Professional Kitchens

Students at Prue Leith’s cooking school use our three kitchens according to the dictates of their training and tasks. In the first Commis training semester, training commences in T1, the school’s Training Kitchen, where there are 20 modern, fully equipped cooking stations, one each per student, for their exclusive use during practical preparation and cooking classes. T2 is the school’s Patisserie Training Kitchen, which is air-conditioned because a cool environment is essential for practising the art and science of successful patisserie production and pastry making. This facility features ten dedicated workstations and is also comprehensively equipped with the latest modern appliances, aids, utensils, and prerequisites of a bona fide cooking school.

The third kitchen of our Pretoria cooking school – the Restaurant Kitchen – caters to our school’s fine-dining venue, The Prue Leith Restaurant, and its paying patrons – discerning diners. Staffed and serviced by cooking school students in their second Commis, this kitchen is divided into three individual kitchens – Hot Kitchen, Cold Kitchen, and Pastry Kitchen, as befits a fine-dining restaurant of the highest standard. It is imperative to the Prue Leith ethos that students who staff the academy’s restaurant have hands-on professional experience of real restaurant conditions and service before they go to other establishments to extend and complete additional practical hours. Prospective students should furthermore note that all our Pretoria cooking school facilities have full generator backup, allowing for uninterrupted training and continuous service during power failures.

Location of Prue Leith’s Cooking School

As mentioned, we are located in Centurion, which is adjacent to Pretoria and less than half an hour’s drive from Sandton. Prue Leith Chefs Academy and cooking school’s location in Centurion means it is conveniently located between Johannesburg and Pretoria, but considerably closer to Pretoria. Centurion is surrounded by a network of highways that connect to many towns and cities in Gauteng, as well as being home to its own Gautrain rapid rail station, making our premises easy to access by various routes or modes of private and public transport.

The Prue Leith Pretoria/Centurion campus is also equipped with two spacious lecture rooms, each seating 40 comfortably, plus a library that houses an enormous selection of culinary publications and multimedia content that extend library users’ exposure to and knowledge of all things related to food.