Full-Day Thai Cooking Class with Fruit & Vegetable Carving – 7 Dishes
A full-day city-centre cooking course: seven dishes across seven categories, your own curry paste, plus a Thai fruit and vegetable carving lesson included.
- Duration
- Full day (approx. 7 hours, pick-up 08:30–09:00, drop-off 15:00–16:00)
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Max group
- 20 pax
Seven dishes, seven categories and a Thai carving lesson thrown in — this is the serious version of a city-centre cooking day, and at 1,200 THB it is remarkable value for eight hours of tuition, ingredients, lunch and transfers.
The day begins with a hotel pick-up between 08:30 and 09:00 and a guided walk through a local fresh market. Your instructor works the stalls with you, naming and explaining the Thai pantry: galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime, holy basil, the chilli hierarchy, palm sugar, tamarind, shrimp paste, the noodles and the rices. It is the part guests say made the biggest difference to their cooking once they got home.
Back at the kitchen you take your own station — wok, burner, board and professional chef's knife — and work through the seven categories: a salad, a stir-fry, a soup, a curry, your own curry paste from raw spices, an appetiser and a dessert. Each category is a pick-list, so you build your own menu and nobody cooks the same lunch. The paste is pounded in a granite mortar and used in your own curry the same day, which is the moment Thai cooking stops feeling like a mystery.
The extra that makes this class memorable is the carving lesson: the Thai craft of turning a carrot, a chilli, a tomato or a watermelon into a flower with a small knife. Every guest gets a lesson included, taught the same way it is taught to Thai catering students. Instruction is available in English and Mandarin, every recipe can be made vegetarian, and you go home with a recipe cookbook, a set of carved vegetables and a much better idea of what you are doing at the wok. Drop-off is between 15:00 and 16:00.
- Seven dishes across seven categories in one day
- Fruit and vegetable carving lesson included for every guest
- Guided fresh-market walk with a full ingredient briefing
- Pound your own curry paste from raw spices and cook with it
- Individual station with wok, burner and professional chef's knife
- Central Chiang Mai location — minutes from Chiang Mai Gate, no long drive
- Bilingual instruction: English and Mandarin Chinese
- Every dish available vegetarian
- Free hotel transfer, herbal drinks, coffee and a recipe cookbook
What's included
- ✓ Free hotel transfer in both directions
- ✓ Guided local fresh-market visit
- ✓ All ingredients for seven dishes
- ✓ Fruit and vegetable carving lesson
- ✓ Individual cooking station with wok and chef's knife
- ✓ English- and Mandarin-speaking cooking instructor
- ✓ Tea, coffee, drinking water and Thai herbal drinks
- ✓ Recipe cookbook
- ✓ Free Wi-Fi at the school
- Alcoholic drinks
- Non-cooking companions (500 THB per visitor)
- Intermediate or advanced carving courses (separate products, 1,900 / 2,500 THB)
- Gratuities
- Travel insurance
- 08:30
Hotel pick-up
Collected from your hotel between 08:30 and 09:00.
- 09:15
Local market walk
A guided tour of a nearby fresh market: herbs, pastes, produce, noodles and rices, with buying and substitution advice.
- 10:00
Kitchen welcome and menu choice
Take your station and choose one dish from each of the seven categories.
- 10:20
Curry paste
Pound your chosen paste — red, green, massaman or khao soi — from raw lemongrass, galangal, chilli and spices in a granite mortar.
- 11:00
Salad and appetiser
Papaya salad, glass noodle salad or fresh spring rolls, then an appetiser such as fried spring rolls, fish cake or golden noodles.
- 12:00
Stir-fry and soup
Pad thai, pineapple fried rice or chicken with cashew nuts, followed by tom yum, tom kha or a clear tofu soup.
- 13:00
Curry and lunch
Finish your curry with the paste you made and sit down to the full spread with herbal drinks.
- 14:00
Carving lesson
A hands-on Thai fruit and vegetable carving class — flowers from carrots, chillies, tomatoes and melon. Take your work with you.
- 14:45
Dessert, cookbook and drop-off
Mango with sticky rice, coconut cake or Thai jelly, your recipe cookbook, then the transfer back to your hotel between 15:00 and 16:00.
Yes. Every dish on the menu can be made vegetarian or vegan — tofu and vegetables in place of the meat and seafood, soy-based seasoning in place of fish sauce and shrimp paste. Tell us at booking so the shopping is right, and remind your instructor of any allergy on the day.
Yes. The menu is a pick-list: you choose one dish from each category, so everyone at the table cooks something different. You also choose how spicy each dish is.
None. The lesson starts with how to hold the small carving knife and works up to a simple flower. It is the beginner course; more advanced carving is available as a separate full-day product.
Yes, free hotel transfer both ways. Pick-up 08:30–09:00 and drop-off between 15:00 and 16:00.
Light clothes you do not mind splashing and closed shoes rather than sandals — you will be standing at a wok and walking through a market. Aprons are provided; tie long hair back.
The half day covers four dishes — salad, stir-fry, soup and curry — in about four and a half hours. The full day adds your own curry paste, an appetiser, a dessert and the carving lesson, and runs roughly 08:30 to 16:00.
Yes, for 500 THB, which includes the food but not a cooking station.