Learn to cook like a French chef at Alain Ducasse’s school in Bangkok

Imagine marinating your langoustines, rolling out sheets of buttered croissant dough or tempering your gourmet chocolate – all in a temperature-controlled, state-of-the-art professional kitchen, while the sun gently spills across your workspace and panoramic vistas of lush lawns and towering ashoka trees shimmer beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Welcome to Ecole Ducasse Nai Lert Bangkok Studio, the newest opening on the verdant grounds of Nai Lert Park in Bangkok’s upscale Ploenchit neighborhood.  

A collaboration between two renowned brands – luxury hospitality leaders Nai Lert Group and iconic chef Alain Ducasse, whose restaurant empire has a total of 20 Michelin stars – the Bangkok branch of this Paris cooking school offers culinary hopefuls at every level a world-class training. In fact, a certificate from Ecole Ducasse is generally acknowledged to grant a competitive edge to professionals looking to work at Michelin-starred kitchens abroad and certainly at any of Ducasse’s 30 restaurants around the world. 

Thoughtfully designed for learning and leisure

The brand-new, three-story building realizes the full Ecole Ducasse vision in a way no other international outpost has so far. Here, the two top floors house a professional kitchen lab, a professional pastry lab, a chocolate and ice-cream lab, a marbled wine cellar suited to small group tastings and a chef’s table dining space where CEOs are likely to close their business deals. Its hybrid design also includes a contemporary French café at the bottom floor, where visitors can nibble on perfect renditions of classic French pastries and crafted beverages with the school’s logo sprinkled on top. Unlike the original Paris campus, and thanks to the Nai Lert Group’s hospitality background, the place also serves as an elegant event space for parties and product launches.

A mastery of French haute cuisine – for everyone

With courses ranging from one-day workshops to ten-week intensives, Ecole Ducasse welcomes students of any age to choose between studying French pastries with chef Olivier Robin or the essentials of French cooking with chef Antonio Cortes Barenque. Both educators have had careers at established restaurants around the world, and have taught at the original Ducasse school in France.
 
The 10-week courses are split into amateur and professional levels. No matter where their starting point, students can learn to make the dishes that have become synonymous with the Ducasse brand, such as the lobster with quinoa au vert or shellfish with soft-boiled egg – and be prepared for kitchen jobs in the future . “These Career Changer courses are designed so that you will be equipped to get a job in a restaurant kitchen should you decide to change careers,” shares Pakawaj Patanasorn, the studio director. “It’s good knowledge to have should that rainy day ever come.”

To be clear: these aren’t the fun and loose classes you might expect when you travel to new cities. Exacting professional standards are enforced at the school. Chefs have to clean the kitchen themselves, for starters, and particular pastries such as the puff pastries or entremets have fastidious production requirements: the flour or mousse must be blast-frozen at a temperature of -35 Celsius within seconds. Having top-of-the-line equipment such as Hengel commercial deep freezers, which come with six- to seven-digit price tags, certainly makes all the difference to the final texture and taste.

A Thai pastry chef offers an inside look

For chef Natcha Saengow, an alumna of Ecole Ducasse in France and the current pastry and bakery chef trainer for the school in Bangkok, tempering chocolate is one of the hardest skills to master. “Once you become a pro you can tell if the chocolate is ready with just your eyes. If not, you usually need to check its temperature,” she says. “If it’s not tempered properly, your chocolate won’t be glossy nor make a satisfying snapping sound when it’s broken.” But don’t worry: while these techniques are crucial for professional chefs, some of the amateur courses also make sure to adapt Ducasse’s Michelin-starred creations so they can be made with humble home appliances.

For those tight on time and commitment, or just interested in specific creations, short classes can be a great option. Fresh pasta, macarons and choux pastries are just some of the spotlighted dishes students can learn to master across four-hour workshops. “When I first started teaching, I thought it would be like replaying a movie, but it’s not like that at all,” chef Natcha confesses with a laugh. “Some students just want to have fun while others are serious about learning the technical theory behind each dish. We have to adapt to meet each student’s needs, so no class is ever the same.”  

A French café in a verdant oasis 

If you’re not in for the four-hour labor of creating a croissant, enjoy one at the café, which is worth a visit for its garden terrace location, quirky table markers bearing Gallic city names such as Toulouse and Nice and, of course, the delicious pastries. Savories like the quiche offer a flakey crust perfectly balanced with a velvety, salty custard, speckled with generous bits of ham. 

The epitome of French sweets, the dainty choux Paris-Brest, showcases a refined, sweet creaminess from caramel and hazelnut. Another must-try is the tarte citron meringuée — the buttery tart base is delightfully crispy, while the fluffy meringue offers an intense lemony tang. As you wash it down with a flower-topped Regal Earl Grey, surrounded by verdant, trimmed bushes and views of glossy skyscrapers in the far backdrop, you’ll forget that the hustle and bustle of Bangkok lies just beyond.

Ready for a taste of Bangkok? Fly directly to Bangkok with Thai Airways.