Behind the scenes of Le Cordon Bleu - where fine dining is served for $45

Monday, 27 October 2025

It’s Friday, and it’s time for lunch. On Cuba St, there’s a place that offers a two-course meal for $45 a head. Sounds like a great deal.

The menu features seared scallops in saffron butter to start, followed by a Toulouse cassoulet with duck confit. Both courses come with optional wine pairings.

The food is delicious — no surprise, given it’s prepared, cooked, and served by students from Le Cordon Bleu New Zealand.

Le Cordon Bleu is one of the world’s oldest culinary schools, founded in 1895 and now with campuses around the globe.

World-famous chefs have trained behind its doors - Julia Child and The Great British Bakeoff’s Mary Berry among them. In Wellington, alumni include Joshua Ross, head chef at Bellamy's in the Beehive.

The New Zealand school was recently voted Oceania's Best Culinary Training Institution.

Tucked away at the harbour end of Cuba Street, the campus is surprisingly expansive, spanning several floors. Inside, lecture theatres sit alongside training kitchens, where students learn everything from mastering the mother sauces to balancing business accounts.

The school is open year-round six days a week. Alongside its three-year bachelor’s degree, Le Cordon Bleu offers short courses of seven to 10 weeks, plus a nine-month diploma. The school also recently added a Master of Applied Hospitality Management to its available qualifications.

Le Cordon Bleu’s name speaks for itself — and its tuition reflects that. Domestic students pay $14,000 per year for a bachelor’s degree, while the 18-month Grand Diplôme costs $67,400. Although all courses are NZQF-accredited, student loans are not available.

For international students undertaking the Bachelor’s of Culinary Arts and Business degree, tuition is close to $30,000 a year.

Le Cordon Bleu New Zealand head of school Sue Townshend said international students make up 97% of the campus population.

Many are young teenagers and Wellington is their first time living away from home.

Townshend said 45-50% of the course work was practical.

Students spent a third of the week in a kitchen, while the rest of the time they were learning accounting, or out on a field trip - the course changed from week to week.

Much of the teaching is done through demonstration, with instructors cooking while the students observe.

The Post spoke with Ratu Agung Aura Mardiah who came from Jakarta, Indonesia, to study the bachelor degree.

Her mother wanted her to attend Le Cordon Bleu, she said. She lives alone but has a great community of friends - fellow students.

The 19-year-old said she came to New Zealand to meet people from around the world - only to find her out most of her fellow students were also Indonesian, she joked.

Mardiah‘s mother is Sumatran and Balinese, so she had grown up eating slow-cooked meals with a lot of herbs and spices.

As a child, Mardiah fell in love with rendang, a Southeast Asian curry that takes almost 12 hours to make. Her family would usually eat the dish during Eid.

“Just looking at my cousins and my aunts and uncles looking at their faces enjoying the randang - I wished I could have that skill to make people smile with my food.”

When she expressed a desire to study as a cook, her mother suggested Le Cordon Bleu.

The course was different from what she had expected - traditional French cuisine. As an Indonesian, she expected something more flavourful.

“I like it, especially learning the techniques and how to make creams and how to make pastries.”

She enjoyed plating the meals, and so far her favourite dish to make has been homemade salmon pasta — with fresh pasta made by hand.

What did she have to get used to in Wellington? “The wind,” Mardiah replied instantly — though she added she loves the city and its pace of life.

“I wasn't expecting it to be this windy, but, honestly, that was kind of my fault.”

Mardiah plans to work back-of-house, and maybe one day own her own business.

Le Cordon Bleu offers its students the opportunity to spend six months of their final year doing work experience at a restaurant - many go on to work there after graduating.

Mardiah said she wanted to go to either Melbourne or Fiji for her work experience.

Kitchens are famously high-pressure environments but Mardiah said the industry had changed, in that mental health was more of a priority for the younger generation.

“It's more chill now. That's good, but I somehow feel like being pushed to be better also makes you want to explore your skills more.”

Le Cordon Bleu technical director Sébastien Lambert is in charge of training the new generations of chefs.

He said his students weren’t only coming to Wellington to study - they were coming to get opportunities for work.

Giving the students the confidence and the tools and skills to work in a kitchen was his job, Lambert said.

“You may be very creative, but if you don't actually have the good, strong foundation, you struggle all the way to try to create what you want.”

Inspiration, along with skill and logistics, was the key to being a great chef, he said.

A lot of students, taught via social media, concentrated too much on the visual, he said - not on the flavour, or the dish itself.

At Le Cordon Bleu, they taught “back to basics” cuisine: treating great ingredients with respect to bring out the best flavour.

“That's how we teach, to respect the flavour of the product.”