Regency International Centre
Tourism and hospitality are worth billions in jobs and spin offs around the nation and round the globe and so it is no wonder students from all over beat a path to the new Regency - one of the biggest and definitely the most modern training centre in the world. Our famous Regency Hotel School has a gleaming and sweeping new home and a new name to match. It is now the Regency International Centre for Hospitality, Leisure and Food Studies.
The TAFE campus at Regency Park is a well known landmark and now it boasts a $40 million jewel designed by award winning Adelaide architect Guy Maron. Its flowing contemporary foyer is but the face of a sleek and somewhat staggering body of teaching kitchens, bakeries, butcheries and more behind. Giving the vast foyer a resort-rather-than-school feel is a snaking deli bar counter filled with gourmet goodies made by students, while behind it is the International College of Hotel Management with its links to Europe. Staff and visitors can sip a coffee while they contemplate and purchase, or if they come in late afternoon the students behind four different bars will put their mixing and shaking theories into practice.
Then there is the piece de resistance. We called in to Graduates, the grand new restaurant that's open to the public, as students prepared for a big lunch crowd to come. We'd be back too after a behind-the-scenes squiz at a magnificent new facility.
This future foodies heaven focussing on all manner of hospitality and leisure has only been open since March, 2002, but it has inherited 25 years of excellence. The controversially reformist Premier Don Dunstan dared to dream in the 1970's of Adelaide becoming the Athens of the south - a cultural capital, where top food and wine was a natural part of life. As we know, it happened, thanks in no small part to Regency's lecturers and students who've gone before … 80,000 graduates, who now work all over the world.
We watched one of the chief lecturers, Robyn, prepare cauliflower au gratin with a keen platoon of chefs-to-be round the kitchen bench. Helen from California was one, part of the amazing whole of 6000 full and part-time students from 50 countries. On one of Regency's public tours you'll see many of them in the eight fully equipped teaching kitchens.
In the bakery, we watched master pastry Chef Robert deftly assemble a fruit flan before his class. In the next space, Swiss rolls to serve an army were being lovingly finished off with cream and chocolate coating. Venturing into another kitchen, we found patissier extraordinaire, Hardy Jesche, presiding over an advanced class preparing exquisite chocolates. You have to be a chef already to make this programme, and we watched Kimiko from Tokyo, Eddie from Malaysia and Cara from Adelaide work together on the many stages in making a princess almond.
This cornucopia of culinary know-how is open to all of us, too. "The Philosopher's Stove" brochure details a series of half-day sessions where you can mix it with the masters. Or you can watch the alchemists at work and eat the results. The out-the-back side of Regency is definitely accessible.
Curvaceous and spacious, the new Regency International Centre is full of surprises - curing and corning, for instance, in the food and beverage processing faculty. We are talking meat studies, as 150 apprentices in butchering spend four weeks of their year here. Mark was trimming red-meat cuts on one bench - he is usually at the Bay Junction Butcher shop, while his training colleague Mat woks for Woolies. Again, they are under a watchful eye. Master butcher Shayne O'Dea has twenty years experience to share. He is willing to pass on his wisdom to visitors too, and so if you've ever fancied making your own smallgoods like the "beerstick" spicy sausages we saw being filled, check their "home brew" classes.
The apprentice group loaded the beer-stick strings into a smoker oven for a two hour finishing touch. The meat industry is a big part of the overall hospitality industry, second only to wine in size and value. To drive that home, the new training facility here is one of the biggest butcheries south of the equator. They get through 129 tonne of meat each year.
At this new Regency International Centre for Hospitality, Leisure and Food Studies, we saved the best for last… sampling the senior student fare and enjoying their hospitality and service. For them, it's a "reality restaurant", while for us it is Graduates, and as ever the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and in more ways than one.
On shift for front.of.house in the restaurant today were seniors in the Regency Hospitality, Operations and Management Faculty, and the international flavour was very evident as Wan Yu from Taiwan and Minh from South Korea joined Carissa from Mt Gambier in serving about seventy guests..
Meanwhile, in the very busy restaurant kitchen next door, my pan fried salmon was just about ready to be plated. Lecturer Paul kept the orders flowing through the student-staffed kitchen, and checked as the lightly pan fried Spring's smoked salmon was placed upon a bed of tarragon-scented kipfler potatoes and a horseradish dressing was drizzled round the plate. It is all grace under pressure here, as there are often more than a hundred guests in - and most share the same lunchtime. Still, the second-year chefs-to-be have top restaurant and hotel experience to steer them.
The waiters in the restaurant are putting studies into action as well, using the latest technology and age old balancing skills. This is only the entrée. For these students, their future in the hospitality industry is bright, as it is one of the fastest growing anywhere. With trainees from the fifty countries here, they're going to be a class act internationally.
If you want to see them and taste the show, Graduates is open for much of the week, and they will even do a package - a tour and lunch. Either way, a booking is essential. They would love you to come and experience the new Regency International Centre.
Details
Regency International Centre for Hospitality, Leisure and Food StudiesRegency Institute of TAFE
Days Road
Regency Park, South Australia, 5010Web: www.regencyhotelschool.sa.edu.au
Graduates Restaurant
Lunch
Tuesday-Friday Dinner Wednesday-Saturday
Bookings essential Ph. (08) 8348 4348Tours
Duration: 1 hour Fee: $4.50
Tour and lunch packages available
Ph (08) 8348 4348
Short Cooking Courses
"The Philosopher's Stove" "The Kid's Kitchen"
Brochures on current series available
Ph. (08) 8348 4097
