Vietnam's Hard Knock Kitchen
Training Vietnam's street kids to be Michelin star chefs
Can a love of food help Vietnam's street kids and orphans find a brighter future? One culinary school in Hanoi is giving disadvantaged youths a taste of the 5-star chef lifestyle, one dish at a time.
Two thirds of the students at Vietnam's internationally recognised cookery school, KOTO, are orphans. Named after its motto, Know One, Teach One, the intern school caters to children like 18-year-old Duong, who apply to escape a troubled past. "My parents both passed away at a very young age. I can’t afford to study, or even to live, so I decided to apply", says Duong. Many children live on a few dollars a day, living rough and at the mercy of sexual exploitation. KOTO aims to help some of the million Vietnamese living in poverty, and raise new generations of chefs to feed the country's growing tourism industry. "If you ask about my kids, I’ll be able to tell you who was in the class 20 years ago", says founder Jimmy Pham, likening the school to a second family.
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