Bureaucracy and Work Visas for Thai Chefs
German bureaucracy proved to be one of the greatest obstacles. While footballers could be brought into the country without difficulty, it was extremely hard to obtain work visas for Thai chefs.
In 1994, a petition campaign was launched at the flagship and at Kamala, demanding work permits for Thai chefs. The campaign received broad support and even made it onto the front page of the International Herald Tribune.
Particularly difficult was working with the Bonn-based "Zentrale für Ausland- und Fachvermittlung" (the central office for overseas and specialist placement), which failed to fulfil its actual purpose. An official there became the most tenacious adversary in the battle for visas for new chefs. He demanded, as a condition for granting work permits, verified minimum turnovers of 100,000 euros per restaurant, language tests, proof of formal training, and limited approvals to a maximum of two Thai chefs per restaurant. At that time, there was barely any formal culinary training in Thailand. Most chefs had acquired their knowledge through practical work — learning by doing. In 1998, he reclassified Thai chefs as sous-chefs, which created total costs of nearly 6,000 Deutschmarks per chef — a burden many small restaurants could not bear. The number of Thai chefs entering Germany by this route fell dramatically.
The "Young Thai Professional Exchange Program"
In 2000, I attempted to establish a training and exchange programme with the support of the German Development Service. The Thai Deputy Minister of Education even travelled to Berlin for this purpose. But the concept had been leaked to the representative of the Royal Thai Capital Fund, who at the time held shares in the Hotel Adlon and wished to exploit it for his own purposes. He failed quickly in this, as the children of Thailand's upper class who arrived in Germany by this route had never made a bed themselves, let alone cleaned a room — least of all in the grand Adlon.
The struggle for work permits attracted media interest. Press reports about the high quality of the Maothai kitchen did the rest, and made the restaurants widely known.