Shawn Ming never wanted to become a cook.

He rebelled against the prospect from an early age, despite urgings from his father Fred, a popular chef who taught culinary arts at the Bermuda College.

“I definitely did not want to take after my father,” the 47-year-old said. “I hated everything about catering. Sometimes, though, God sets us up for things without us knowing.”

Mr Ming joined his father at the Bermuda College nearly 20 years ago. He took over as culinary arts instructor when his father retired, in 2001.

He was 16 when he reluctantly started on his path as a chef. His father and his late mother, Charlotte, insisted he get a job for the summer holidays. “They were both educators. They weren’t the type of parents who would tolerate me sitting on the couch all summer,” he said.

He got a job in the airport kitchen, plopping food into plates as they passed by on a conveyor belt.

It was in the days before 9/11, when you were guaranteed a meal on a plane.

There was no food preparation involved.

“When I told my father, he had this smile on his face,” said Mr Ming. “I’d forgotten that was his very first kitchen job, working at the airport.

“The ladies I was working with were all in their 40s and they’d disappear at lunchtime, so I started going inside to the kitchen to talk to the English chefs there. They were closer to my age. I would ask them about what they were doing.”

He worked there every summer. In the meantime, he got an associate’s degree in science from the Bermuda College and a bachelor’s in biology from Acadia University in Canada.

After university he found himself back at the airport.

“The head chef called me in and asked if I would like to start as a beginner chef,” he said. “One of the English chefs had left and they were short. He’d seen that I’d taken an interest in what they were doing.”

He took the job. His father eventually convinced him to go back to college to study culinary arts.

“He said, ‘I’ll be retiring in a few years and the Bermuda College will be looking for another culinary arts instructor’,” said Mr Ming. “But he said I needed some formal qualifications.”

He got an associate’s degree from the Culinary Institute of America. “It was considered one of the best cooking schools in the country,” said Mr Ming. “Half of the instructors were master chefs.”

After graduating in 1995, he worked for the Southampton Princess for two years.

“When I left, I was chef de partie,” he said. “I worked in Windows on the Sound where we usually fed about 700 people per night using five chefs. That was an experience.”

He then moved to the Bermuda College.

“I worked with my father for four years before he retired,” Mr Ming said. “My father was an expert in showing people how to do things. I think that’s what I learnt from him. I wouldn’t say I learnt to cook from him.”

His biology degree proved especially helpful.

“Biology is really about living things,” he said. “We eat things that were once alive. When I was in college we had to dissect cats and dogs, fish and many other types of animals. It’s a lot like what I’m doing here with these students. Earlier, I was teaching them to debone a chicken; that’s basically dissection.”

Sometime along the way, he decided to embrace his destiny rather than fight it.

“I hope I am like my father,” Mr Ming said. “He spent 27 years instructing at the Bermuda College and I hope I also spend the rest of my career working here.

“There’s no greater thrill than seeing my students cross the stage at graduation and knowing I had something to do with that. I always tell them, whatever thrill you have, I feel that ten times over because I have ten students up there.”

He has two siblings who are both teachers.

“My sister, Tamara Adderley, teaches special needs children,” Mr Ming said. “My brother, Robert, owns two schools in New York.”

As for his 72-year-old father, Fred, he is currently in Boston undergoing prostate cancer treatment. “He’s in good spirits,” said Mr Ming. “He’s doing well.”