Cooking Morning Class Chiang Mai Visit Organic Garden and Market

This is the 9:30am sitting of Siam Garden Cooking School’s hands-on class, meeting at The Pizza Company in Ruamchok Mall before the group heads out to the local market at its busiest and freshest hour — stallholders are still restocking, and the produce on the tables hasn’t sat out all day. From there it’s on to the school’s own organic garden, where the herbs and vegetables going into the wok that morning are still growing a few metres from the kitchen. The evening class covers the same ground later in the day, after the market has thinned out and the light has changed.

Cooking is entirely hands-on — one student per wok, with each person choosing their own 6 dishes from the school’s menu and deciding how spicy to make them. Everyone also learns to steam glutinous rice properly for mango sticky rice, the standard finish to the class. Food is eaten by open-air pavilion seating in the garden, and dishes can be made meat, vegetarian, vegan or gluten-free on request. An English-speaking instructor runs the session in an air-conditioned dining room for the classroom portion, and the school notes it’s outside the city centre — a longer drive than a downtown class, covered by the included transfer from Old Town hotels.

Insider Tip: Choosing the morning slot means the organic garden tour happens before the day heats up — useful if the group would rather not be outdoors mid-afternoon.

Watch out: the school sits outside central Chiang Mai, so factor in transfer time even though pickup from Old Town is included.