While the busyness of a top notch restaurant kitchen might be a deterrent to some people considering the culinary arts as a profession, it is exactly what sous chef Kim Dean likes about her job.

Sous-chef Miss Dean is in charge of Bacci Restaurant at the Fairmont Southampton, a trendy Italian restaurant that opened about a year ago.

Miss Dean, 29, came to Bermuda from Halifax, Nova Scotia Canada to work for the Fairmont Southampton Princess in 2001.

"When I was choosing a career I always thought I would specialise in pastry, but after I started working on the line, I liked the pressure," she said. "What I do to relieve pressure is to bake in my off time. I like making cakes, cheese cakes, pretty much anything."

For Miss Dean, being under 30 and female and running a restaurant like Bacci is an accomplishment considering that even in today's world she has experienced some gender discrimination.

"At a lot of places, women don't have a place in a professional kitchen," she said. "Things are starting to change. It depends on where you go.

"When I was in Australia on the east coast there was no problem getting a job. On the west coast they were more reluctant to give me a position as anything other than dishwasher.

"When I came here, they weren't really use to having women in the kitchen, but it has changed a lot over the last four years. There are a lot more women in the kitchen now than there was."

She encouraged more Bermudians to take an interest in the hospitality industry.

"There are quite a few Bermudian chefs," she said. "But I gather that Bermudians don't want jobs in the hospitality industry. But there are so many opportunities if they would just give it a chance."

Miss Dean went to the Culinary Institute of Canada on Prince Edward Island to study the culinary arts. She has her Red Seal Journeyman's Papers which are credentials that are recognised all over the world.

Her interest in cooking, particularly baking, was influenced by her mother who works in drug testing at a pharmaceutical company.

Although pharmaceuticals may seem a long way from a pot roast or a flan, in reality, cooking is really just an edible chemistry experiment.

Possibly for this reason, chemistry was one of Miss Dean's favourite subjects in school. In fact, she says chemistry was the only subject she enjoyed in school.

"I always enjoyed cooking as a kid," she said. "My mother was a really good cook. So I started fooling around in the kitchen when I was just about eight years-old.

"My mother would buy me books and I would go through them and see what I could fool around with that looked interesting. My mother is really good at cakes and brownies. She is really good at everything. I don't think there is anything that she is not good at making."

Miss Dean said baking takes skill and a precise hand.

"It definitely takes a certain kind of person to do it professionally," she said. "It is very exact. With pastry, you can't just throw a bunch of things in the pan and make it taste good, as you can with other types of cooking.

"It is very precise. It is a lot more to do with chemistry and balance, than other types of cooking. The chemistry helps, but I didn't study it as much as I could have. I didn't really enjoy school that much until I went to culinary school."

She loves to travel. A few years ago she was working in Australia when family issues called her home to Halifax. She was working in a restaurant there when the opportunity to work for the Fairmont came up.

"Bermuda sounded exotic," she said. "It was somewhere different. It turned out that it wasn't as exotic as I thought it was going to be because I didn't really know a whole lot about Bermuda until I came here. It is a beautiful island. There are a lot of different things here to experience. I think it is great."

Miss Dean is very close to her family, and she recently helped her brother Brian to get a job at the Waterlot Inn, also as a chef.

"He only just started picking it up in the last couple of years," she said. "He is just at the beginning of his career. He and I do dinners for my parents and their friends all the time.

"The Fairmont doesn't really like us to work together here. I agree with that, because being he's my brother I would be harder on him. That wouldn't be fair. He is only just learning, but I would expect more of him because I want him to do a lot better. For his learning benefit it is better for him to learn under someone else."

Miss Dean said that working at the Fairmont Southampton Princess has been a very good experience. During the last four years she has worked at many of the Southampton Princess' restaurants including the Waterlot Inn, the Whaler Inn and the Newport Room.

Miss Dean's daily duties include ensuring that meals are prepared properly, and that things are running smoothly.

"When we are slower I work behind the line as well," she said. "For the most part I am tasting things before they go out, making sure they taste the way they should and look the way they should. I do all the food costing, inventory and ordering. My job here is a lot more managerial than actually getting my hands in the pot."

She said at Bacci her hours are not too bad, particularly in the slower season. She usually does an eight to ten hour day, or 12 to 14 hours if things are very busy.

"In a hotel it is usually a little bit more controlled," she said. "In the business when you are working in a private restaurant, there is no such thing as overtime.

"They kill you with hours. You could work anywhere from 15 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week."

She said the staff at Bacci are particularly proud of their antipasti bar.

"We do have our antipasti bar which is the only one on the island that offers quite a collection," she said. "We are very affordable. We do have the higher standard of service level that the Fairmont maintains."

Of all the dishes at Bacci she recommends the veal chop with Taleggio Cheese in the middle.

Miss Dean plans to remain in Bermuda for another year or two and then move on to another Fairmont hotel.

"I am very much into travel," she said. "I want to experience many different cultures and countries, before it is time to settle down. I don't know where I would go next.

"I like the warm. I will just wait and see whatever comes up. Fairmont has hotels all over the world. They have just broken into Europe recently."

To help her work more effectively in an Italian restaurant the Fairmont sent Miss Dean and another colleague to Italy recently.

"We got a lot of good ideas there, and experienced some of the culture," she said. "It was great. There was a lot of food. The wine there was unreal. Unfortunately, we didn't get to go to any of the wineries because it was winter but the country there is beautiful.

"We went to Rome, Tuscany, Florence, Venice and Verona. I didn't feel I could fully write an Italian menu if I hadn't been there to actually experience what the food and the culture was like."

She said it was a good way to look at whether Bacci is doing things in the Italian way or not.

"There were a couple of things that we do different than they do there," she said. "But it was good for me to go there, because it also confirmed some things that I was doing.

"We are kind of on the right track here. It helped me to simplify things as well. It gave us both a better understanding of the food we are doing here."

She said one of the differences between authentic Italian food and the food at Bacci is that Bacci tries to class things up a bit.

"With the type of hotel the Fairmont Southampton Princess is, and the clientele it has, the food needs to be a bit more extravagant," she said. "So we try to bulk up with presentation, as well as flavour."