Meet The Cookery's new Head Chef whose culinary journey started on her family's farm in Moldova

Valentina, 36, started in the job during the final months of the last academic year, having spent the previous two-and-a-half years working as a Culinary Teacher at Leeds City College.

She is now looking forward to welcoming the 2026/27 cohort of budding chefs and front-of-house hosts onto Campus, as she plans the menus that they will cook and serve to our guests in The Cookery, which has made this year's AA Hospitality Awards shortlist for College Restaurant of the Year.

After being born in Russia, Valentina moved to Moldova at the age of five, where she was raised and went to school.

Other family members were from Kazakhstan and Ukraine and, when her mother remarried, Valentina also grew up as part of a Bulgarian step family.

She went on to work under distinguished German and Italian head chefs but also strongly defends traditional English cuisine to any overseas critics who dismiss it as bland.

It is now her intention to blend all those influences together as she broadens our students’ culinary horizons and tantalises the tastebuds of The Cookery’s diners.  

“From September, I’ll try to use different cuisines and combine a mixture of them,” Valentina declared. “I was raised in a family with many different cultures and I want to do vegan and vegetarian nights and make the dinners a bit more like tasting menus, so we can create more types of dishes and students can see how you prep for that and do the service.

“The lunches can be more a la carte to help them understand how that works, too. In terms of ingredients, I did introduce some Moldovan influences earlier this year.

“For the Showcase night, we had aubergine stuffed with feta, garlic and crème fraiche, which is a slight twist on a popular Moldovan dish and we also had roasted vegetables in a tomato sauce.

“We eat more river fish in Moldova, so I like sea bass because it’s a bit coarser and we also put beetroot soup on the menu. Moldovan and Ukrainian food is often about roots and all the plates that evening came back empty!

“I think a full Moldovan menu would be very difficult, though, so I like to combine English, French and other influences. I love traditional English food like rhubarb. If you know how to cook that correctly, it’s amazing.

“I don’t like hearing people say that English food isn’t tasty. This country has introduced me to a lot of new flavours, especially with the Indian spice influences and, if you get the flavours right for a traditional Sunday roast, it’s very tasty.

“It’s the same with fish and chips and Yorkshire Puddings. Wow - they can be amazing, but some chefs just don’t get the flavours right.

“I’ve started enjoying lamb a lot more over here, too. In Moldova, we ate pork and turkey more, because we had those animals at home.” 

Cooking with ingredients from the land rather than off a supermarket shelf was how Valentina first nurtured her culinary skills.

Recalling those formative years, she said: “We were farmers, so had our own animals, grapes to produce our own wine and different types of vegetables and fruits. By the age of 10, I was cooking food because I was taking care of my youngest brother. 

“He was only three and I remember the first meal I cooked for him. It was the worst pasta I ever made in my life!

“It was overcooked with some veg but, then, I started to learn how to cook potatoes and some fresh salads. My dad then came back home after working away as a builder, where he’d been eating anything and he started enjoying what I was cooking and told me I was good for my age.”

From the age of 15, Valentina went on to assist her mum for three months during the summer holidays in a children’s hospital where she still works now.

It was invaluable experience, even if the long hours almost put her off the idea of becoming a chef for life.

“It showed me how things work in a big kitchen,” she explained. “We had huge pots to cook porridge in and there were lots of specific dietary requirements, which meant making five meals a day with different styles. 

“Everything was steamed and roasted, too, never fried and we had no machines to chop or peel, so everything was done by hand. We would start at 4am to make sure everything was prepped – the cabbages, onions and potatoes – and finish at 5pm.

“I wasn’t paid. I was doing it all voluntary and I remember my mum asked me if I wanted to be a chef and I said, ‘No, never in my life’.”

Valentina’s talent had not gone unnoticed by her mother, however, and, deep down, her daughter knew she enjoyed cooking.

So, at 18, she enrolled at a Cookery School in Moldova, which she attended five days a week, whilst also catering for up to 300 guests at weddings over weekends. 

“The wedding food was very traditional and we would do lots of different complex plates until the table was full,” Valentina pointed out. “We did dishes like stuffed chicken and stuffed fish and used all parts of the animals, so nothing got wasted.

“The course was also one that my parents could afford, rather than me going to university and we knew it would get me working quicker.”

That assumption was borne out when Valentina was offered full-time employment at the Michelin Guide five-star hotel where she had completed a one-month placement.

It proved the perfect environment to experience new cooking approaches and ingredients.

“I worked under a chef from Germany, who I’m still in contact with, and a second one from Italy, who is a famous chef in Russia now,” she added. “At the school, I learned about traditional Moldovan food but, at the hotel, I was cooking different European food. 

“The first time I ever saw French cuisine was in that hotel. They needed somebody to do the pastry side of things and, after the placement, they employed me, whilst I was still doing my course.”

In subsequent years, she worked her way up to Head Chef roles but, after deciding to move to the UK as a young mother and non-English speaker in 2017, she accepted junior roles at the likes of Frankie & Benny’s, Bobos Cocktail Bar and The Botanist. 

“I started again from scratch, because it was different cuisine and a different style of cooking,” she pointed out. “The skills are the same, but, in Moldova, our kitchens used to be made up of different rooms – not one large open plan one, which is normal over here, so I had to get used to things like that.”

Valentina’s skills soon led to roles with more responsibility, though, as she landed a job at The Principal Hotel (now The Milner), where she progressed from Commis Chef to Demi Chef and, then, Chef de Partie.

Then Covid struck, shutting down the hospitality industry overnight.

Whilst unemployed, Valentina completed an online Nutrition course with York College and launched a YouTube channel called Cook & Bake with Valentina that she still updates now with simple dishes and baking ideas, creating a platform that would be useful for students across Campus who might be leaving home this September and perhaps need to cook for themselves for the first time.

As the country tentatively emerged from Lockdown, Valentina again found herself working for a franchise chain and acquiring more knowledge that she can now pass on to young learners.

“When Covid finished, there were no fancy restaurants open and I needed to find any place to get a job and support a child, so I worked at Bill’s Restaurant,” she said. “We did really busy covers – 200 people for breakfast, 200 for lunch and 200 for dinner. 

“They were big services every day and it helped me quickly understand how to run a kitchen in this country. I took care of the restaurant during the day, taking food orders, putting everything away and organising the kitchen for the evening service.”

As the industry recovered, Valentina found herself specialising in pastry once more – first at The Grand and, then in The No.1 by York GuestHouse’s Pearly Cow restaurant, where she completely recreated their Afternoon Tea menu to rave reviews.

Having acquired a vast range of experience in different UK kitchens, Valentina also wanted to learn more about front-of-house etiquette in this country and, as a consequence, spent the summer of 2023 serving customers from the SASA Greek Street Food outlet in York’s SPARK outdoor shipping container venue. 

Now armed with a broad range of skills garnered in Moldova and on these shores, Valentina was then invited to an interview for a teaching role at Leeds City College by Course Leader Andrew Dixon, who she had worked alongside at The Grand.

She got the job and, despite a little trepidation initially, quickly found her feet.

“Wherever I was working as a chef, I was always training new chefs,” she reasoned. “With my first lesson, I had 15 students, which was a bit different, but I just imagined that they were all my commis chef and it worked.

“Teaching is about creating relationships. You need to make lessons interesting, because there are lots of other things you’re thinking about when you’re our students’ age, so I do everything possible to ensure they’re engaging with me and want to come to my lessons and I have a good record for continued attendance.

“I like to share my experience and see people understanding what I’m explaining, then watching them develop. Some of my former students are already working as sous chefs and I had really good feedback from one, who said that I’d changed his life.

“If my student develops and progresses into a good job that means I have done my job correctly and I like to help and support them.”

Valentina also taught NVQ Level 2 and 3 courses to adults at Leeds City College but is now enjoying the opportunity to deliver more hands-on tuition during services at The Cookery, rather than being solely classroom based.

On the appeal of her new job, she enthused: “I wanted a new challenge because, just teaching, I was beginning to lose my skill for cooking dishes. I felt I couldn’t be as creative. 

“With a child, I didn’t want to be a Head Chef anywhere, because you have to do nights, so this job was perfect, because I can teach but be more creative with the services and at more sociable times for my family.

“I’m investing my knowledge to help create new chefs for the hospitality industry. We have a lot of space in the restaurant and that’s important for students who are learning to do services.

“I always show the students a dish and then explain what their individual responsibilities are going to be for the services, while making sure the dish is cooked correctly, because we have to serve it. In the classroom, they can make mistakes but it can’t be wrong in the restaurant.”

Passionate about education, Valentina is also ambitious and would, one day, like to influence hospitality tuition on a national scale. 

“I’d eventually like to work for somebody like City & Guilds to maybe modernise the courses a little,” she admitted.

Finally, when asked if she had to choose her signature dish, Valentina is hesitant before divulging: “It’s hard to choose my favourite dish to make, because I love to cook everything.

“Seafood is my favourite thing to eat, along with duck meat but, maybe, to make, I’d go for rolled pancakes with cream cheese, salmon and caviar. I like to combine unusual ingredients to get an amazing taste at the end, whether that’s sweet and sour or sweet and salty.”

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