Student Story: Zoe Ombler

From fine dining to running cookery lessons and pop-up feast nights, Zoe Ombler, a freelance private chef based in the Ise of Wight, chats to us about what she is up to after earning her Chef Skills accreditation in 2022.

Since you graduated from Leiths Online Chef Skills in 2022, what have you been working on in the culinary world in the last year? 

I’ve been working as a freelance private chef (aka The Epicurean Sailor) on the Isle of Wight specialising in fine dining. 

I’ve also been running small group cookery lessons and pop-up-themed feast nights from my home kitchen whilst I search for a permanent location to establish the Isle of Wight’s first cookery school. KitchenAid has offered to sponsor me and has already provided me with some of their equipment to run my small classes with. I also taught all of the cooking lessons at the Great Wight Bite food festival last September — 165 students aged 5 to 70 over 2 days! Plus I collaborated with the Isle of Wight Distillery where I ran a canapé masterclass using their range of award-winning spirits. 

I’m just about to be involved with a brand new events expo on the island doing live cooking demonstrations and classes and will be one of five chefs cooking a course each for a charity dinner in January in aid of the Burnt Chef Project supporting hospitality professionals. 

Finally, I’ve started to collaborate with Helena Nicklin (@helenasips) who is an award-winning drinks writer and broadcaster and we are hoping to do a lot more together this year — watch this space!

How have the skills you developed on Leiths Online shaped what you do now? 

Leiths Online Chef Skills course improved some of my techniques and made me more efficient in how I prepare, produce and present dishes. I learnt new skills and cooked with some ingredients that I wasn’t familiar with at the time and possibly wouldn’t have thought to try in my everyday life without having been introduced to them through the Chef Skills course. 

Not only that, as someone who suffers from Imposter Syndrome, the course gave me the confidence to realise my value as a professional chef and, most importantly — not to second guess myself — A shout out to my mentor Louisa for giving me advice.  

What are your next aspirations?

I love working as a private chef and want to continue doing this — it’s truly a privilege to be asked to cook for someone for a special occasion and to be part of their celebrations. But from an earning perspective, it can sometimes be rather perilous as I don’t always know when I'm going to be booked for an event and then during the peak months everyone wants me to cook for them seemingly on the same day and there’s only one of me! 

So I also really want to focus on finding premises where I can run more regular cooking lessons alongside my feast nights and collaborations and be more in charge of my career progression and earning potential. My other half will also be happy to reclaim the house which is overflowing with kitchen equipment and dining paraphernalia!

What piece of advice would you give to someone starting a Leiths Online professional course?

Don’t even hesitate! As someone who has cooked for as long as I can remember, you will always learn something from Leith’s professional course and develop any existing skills further. 

The course improved my confidence, pushed me out of my comfort zone and made me start to believe in myself — without doing the course I’m not sure I would have had the confidence to start as a private chef and I do believe that being Leiths trained helps to reassure first-time clients when booking me that I’ve been trained properly and won’t let them down when it really matters.

I also made some really great friends through the course and accreditation and we continue to support each other. It’s great having people you can turn to for advice if you’re unsure about something.

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