By BW Hotelier

CHEF YATENDRA Rawat has been appointed as new Executive Chef at The Westin Chennai Velachery. With 18 years of experience in the industry, Chef Rawat brings with him numerous offerings to his new role.

He started his culinary journey as Kitchen management trainee after completing three year culinary diploma from IHM Gwalior. Since then, he has been associated with hotels like Oberoi, Hyatt, Raffles, Moevenpick and Carlson Rezidor in varied culinary positions. In 2007, he joined Australian luxury casino first flagship hotel ’Crown Towers’ -and later an integrated resort and casino complex ’City of Dreams’ : offering 2000 rooms and over 20 F&B outlets as pre-opening team member in Macao. By 2010; he was Officiating Executive Chef & Chef de Cuisine of 320 Rooms with 6 F&B outlets at Hard Rock Hotel in same complex. Before joining Westin, chef Yatendra was involved with Moevenpick hotel, Kochi as pre-opening Executive Chef.

Chef Rawat’s culinary forte lies with Trans-ethnic, pan Asian and western cuisines that got refined during his professional tenures in Indonesia, Singapore, China, Thailand and Macao. He played active roles in the prestigious ’Wine and Food gourmet summit’ and celebrated ’Raffles Wine & Dine’ in Singapore and Macao rubbing shoulders with celebrated Micheline star chefs from all across the globe. He is a trained ISO certified Food safety and hygiene manager and has attended a number of workshops and seminars associated with hospitality and kitchen management.

Chef Rawat has received accolades right from the time he was in IHM, where he represented his institute as team leader for all India student chef competitions and won prizes in varied categories. He has conducted culinary workshops and lectures in prestigious ’Raffles culinary academy’, IFT Macao and different IHMs in India.