Earlier this week, Hot Dinners popped along to the launch of the London International flagship Le Cordon Bleu School, taking up its grand new residence in Bloomsbury Square.
Visitors were treated to a Willy Wonka affair for grown-ups with a ticket to access all areas across five floors and six training kitchens, in the new venue, which has capacity for up to 700 students – double the intake amount at the school’s previous Marylebone location.
While Le Cordon Bleu master chefs and their students were busy in action, guests got to graze their way through rooms of classic hot and cold canapés, delicious pastries and sweets, and fiery Asian mini morsels.
Expertly presented sweet-glazed pork belly cubes and lotus-leaf tempura got top marks in the Julia Child Kitchen whilst upstairs in the Brillat-Savarin Pastry Kitchen – a room full of Augustus Gloops (us included) were oohing and ahhing and overindulging in jelly pastilles, caramel-filled choux pastries, passion fruit chocolate ganache and mini chocolate-dipped ice cream cones filled with raspberry sorbet.
In the V.I.P room, André J Cointreau (President of Le Cordon Bleu) gave a heartfelt thank you speech to all involved with a nod to all the esteemed foodie figures that had turned up for the event. Chefs we spotted included Tom Aikens, Raymond Blanc, Marcus Wareing and Gary Rhodes.
The first Le Cordon Bleu UK Scholarship Award was also announced, awarded to two winners Abigail Watson (17) from Sevenoaks and Lloyd Pinder (16) from Grange Town in Cardiff. They will undertake the nine-month Le Cordon Bleu Grande Diplôme, worth over £40,000, to include all fees and living costs paid for by the school.
Café Le Cordon Bleu will open on the ground floor of the building later this month, headed up by patisserie chef Julie Walsh.
