The ADM 2024 career fair took place on Friday, April 12th. With a variety of guest speakers from nurses to choreographers many different career fields were represented. Although there were many typical jobs such as an accountant or real estate agent, one stood out to many students.
Amber Rowley, a baker/chef shared her experience as a private chef. She studied at Cordon Bleu Culinary Academy in France along with many well-known chefs including Julia Childs, Peggy Porschen, and Mary Berry. “I learned a lot about the basics of the food industry, you know, the basics of knife skills and the basics of making soups and sauces and how to run a restaurant,” she said.
Rowley’s overall experience in culinary school shaped how she runs her catering business along with her restaurants today. Currently, she describes her job as a traveling private chef, as she is the chef of three different restaurants in the Des Monies metro along with traveling the country, catering different events.
In 2008 Rowley joined the film industry where she would prep and cook meals for actors. “I got my start in Ridges of Madison County because my dad was one of the actor’s personal medic on that movie. He then introduced me to people that did crafts service,” she said.
Craft service is a role behind the scenes of a movie or TV show. Typically they provide snacks and food in between the catered meals to the actors along with this production crew. This is how she got her start in the food film industry and took her into catering for films, shows, and music videos.
When asked to describe a typical day she said, “I’ll get up at 4 am and make breakfast, as soon as breakfast is on the table I imminently start preparing lunch and as soon as lunch is on the table, I imminently start preparing appetizers, and then from the appetizers, I’ll start dinner preparation, then once that is done we will put it on the table. And after dinner comes dessert, and then we just clean up. So my day will generally start at about 4 am and end at about 10 pm.”
Rowley’s normal day is spent entirely in the kitchen of her restaurants. This shows her dedication to cooking and delivering a perfect meal to anyone who enters one of her restaurants or chooses her to cater an event.
Rowley decided to become a chef because “honestly, it just comes naturally for me and I’ve always been very good at it. I’ve enjoyed it as a passion and it’s been rewarding as a career.”
From a young age, Rowley knew that this was her passion and that she wanted to make something out of it for herself. She now does a lot of catering around the country along with being a chef for 3 restaurants in Iowa.
She had to build many connections with people to get where she is today and she said “The worst thing somebody can say is no and you’re no worse off than you were before.”
