Maliwan Thai Cooking Class
9 Thanon Sap Sam Hang, Talat Yot, Phra Nakhon, Bangkok 10200
Pick the morning slot if you want the market at its loudest. The class structure keeps groups small and the recipes practical enough to repeat at home. Start with Thai Favourite Dishes if this is your first time cooking Thai food seriously.
You walk into a fully-equipped teaching kitchen on Sipsamhang Road, a few blocks from the old quarter's temple zone, and the instructor hands you a printed recipe packet before the tuk tuk ride to the market. Maliwan runs two daily sessions: 09:00 to 13:00 and 13:30 to 17:30, each lasting four hours. The format stays consistent across all three class types. Bright & Tasty, Mystique Thai, and Thai Favourite Dishes each teach a different menu, but the structure is the same: market walk, prep work, cooking, then eating what you made.
The market visit happens early in the session. You follow the instructor through vendor stalls, learning which herbs stay fresh longest and how to judge a good galangal root by weight. The English-speaking guides handle the Thai-language negotiation, but they explain the ingredients as you go. Back at the kitchen, the workspace is set up with individual stations. Knives, woks, mortars, and gas burners are already laid out. The instructor demonstrates each dish before you start your own version.
This is a hands-on class, not a demonstration. You chop your own lemongrass, pound your own curry paste, and balance your own fish sauce ratios. The teaching pace assumes you have never cooked Thai food before, so every technique gets explained in full. Once all dishes are finished, the group sits together to eat. What you cooked is what you eat, and the instructors eat with you.
The kitchen stays open every day from 8:30 AM to 7 PM for bookings and inquiries. Reservations go by phone or email. The address is slightly hidden: the building sits on Sipsamhang Road, and the entrance is at the back, not the street-facing side. No parking on-site. Most participants arrive by taxi or Grab, since the nearest BTS is several kilometres away and the soi does not connect directly to main roads.