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The last ten years have seen a revolution in Northern Ireland’s food scene. With double the number of restaurants and everything from gastro pub to Michelin star meals on offer, standards and style have gone up - but with not enough young talent coming through, restaurants are facing a crisis, and the search is on to find the next generation of chefs.

In this series, we feature five ‘wee chefs’ among the 16 to 19-year-olds on a professional cookery apprenticeship at the Met, Belfast's Metropolitan College. Under the watchful eye of their tutors and a number of industry professionals, this apprenticeship allows the students to learn the basic skills at college while also experiencing the heat of a real-life kitchen.

From mastering knife skills to fine tuning their palettes and learning to work as a team, we follow the trainee chefs from the start of the college term in September 2019. But do they have what it takes to make it in this gruelling industry? And what will happen to their dreams when lockdown hits and the industry goes into free fall?