Scrumptious start

All new employees at Porsche Consulting undergo an intensive initial training period to prepare for their consulting work. They spend three weeks in group seminars led by company managers, finding out everything about the management consultancy’s methods, recipes, and ingredients. But theory is not everything. What ultimately counts is how you put it into practice. The goal is to achieve measurable results. Or, to put it another way, results you can experience. The situation is similar to a cooking course. At the end you test how the meal tastes. So it made sense that five consultants would meet with Vincenzo Paradiso shortly after they joined Porsche Consulting. This top chef with an appealing last name and Italian parents runs a culinary school painted all in white at a gallery for legendary vintage automobiles in the town of Böblingen near Stuttgart.

Consultants Dr. Julia Seeßle, Koray Yazici, Robin Arndt, Wenjia Su, and Franziska Krasnici were first issued essential kitchen gear: aprons. Responsibilities were quickly assigned. There’s not much talking in professional kitchens. Instead, everyone set to work cleaning vegetables, carving meat and fish (true cutting skills need to be honed), and whipping cream. Men who like to barbecue are particularly fond of the teppanyaki – a  very hot griddle on the kitchen island. It takes the place of a pan, and does a particularly elegant job of cooking steaks and tuna. Oh yes, the hors d’oeuvres were a “somewhat different” version of vitello tonnato: veal tartare on lemon sorbet with foamed soy and tuna sauce. Learning the ropes can indeed be scrumptious.