The high-end Junoon Restaurant in New York, which serves Indian cuisine, recently took on IFT student Suey Chan as an intern. Suey says the internship gave her the chance to experience different cultures in an upscale setting and to put to use the skills she learned at the Institute.
“I was very surprised to be able to get this internship position,” Suey says. She was reputedly the first intern from Macao to work at the fine-dining establishment. Junoon has a creative take on Indian cuisine which has made it one of the top places to eat in New York and earned it a star in the Michelin Guide.
Suey says she struggled at first to adjust to the culture and language there. “Coming from an environment where everybody speaks Cantonese, the sudden shift to the English-speaking world was difficult for me to adapt to,” she says. “But there was a manager in the restaurant who was in charge of the interns. He would always come to me and ask if I needed any help. He also advised me to be proactive in talking to others and in learning.”
IFT students studying for a bachelor’s degree are required to do a 6-month internship in Year 3. They can opt for placements in Macao or abroad, such as in the United States, France or the Maldives.
Suey is a student in the IFT programme leading to the degree of Bachelor of Science in Hotel Management. She did her internship in the second semester of the 2016/17 academic year. She wished to have a frontline position to gain experience in interacting direct with customers.
Suey hesitated before venturing abroad for her internship. “In the end, I felt I should try to fight for the chance to go somewhere outside Macao,” she says.
The skills Suey learned at IFT were useful during her internship at Junoon. “For example, we have courses at IFT that introduce us to basic knowledge about wines,” she says. “At the restaurant there was a daily briefing before we started our day and the sommelier of the restaurant would tell us which wines would be promoted. With the knowledge I got from IFT, I was able to understand the sommelier’s explanations about the wines.”
Although she is a student of Hotel Management, Suey wished to broaden her range of skills by doing an internship in the food and beverage business. “I learned more about the operation of a fine-dining restaurant, including the workflow and the table setting,” she says. “Even if my bachelor’s degree is in Hotel Management, the scope of my learning should be wider than that. That means my future is not limited to only one direction.”
Suey is now back in Macao and working on her graduation thesis. She says her experience in New York helped her improve her communication skills. “Although you learn a lot at IFT, you still feel nervous when you enter the industry,” she says. “You may feel you must learn everything from scratch. But once you are used to the workplace, you then find you can use a lot of what you have learned at IFT.”
IFT has links with a network of leading companies in tourism and hospitality in Macao and abroad which gives undergraduates opportunities to do internships with around 500 employers.
