Shakara Huta and her grandmother in the kitchen at EIT’s Toru Training Restaurant.

Food and Beverage student Shakara Huta could well be the first third generational student at EIT, where she has followed the footsteps of her grandmother Christine Huta into EIT’s School of Tourism and Hospitality.

Shakara has always enjoyed cooking but discovered her true passion for it while working in a café in Australia. Returning to Gisborne, she checked out what was available at EIT and soon enrolled in the Level 3 Food and Beverage Certificate programme.

Her nan could not have been more delighted. She had done the same programme in its first year, in 1996, when it was called the Café Course at what was then known as Tairāwhiti Polytech. Karen Johnston and Sue Matthews, now senior staff, were her tutors.

Mrs Huta had already spent most of her adult life cooking in cafés and restaurants in the Wellington area but wanted to equip herself with a certificate when she moved to Gisborne.

She now cooks at the Dunblane Rest Home and Village and was rapt when her granddaughter decided she wanted to get into the hospitality business.

“She is very capable in the kitchen and she has the personality to work well with people.”

Shakara is loving the 6-month programme, in which she is learning both the café cooking and service aspect of the industry