Is Le Cordon Bleu Shanghai, China’s only branch of French food school, feeling the pressure?
Former students report how high demand for fine Western cuisine education has seen resources spread thinner in classes, while wealthy parents are enrolling children with few serious culinary ambitions
To get to China’s first Cordon Bleu campus, in the Pudong district of Shanghai, ask your taxi driver to stop at the address on Pudong South Road, where you’ll see a large blue sign posted near the entrance of a vacant hotel lobby. Though the sign on the wall says Le Cordon Bleu, the dusty glass doors next to it will be chained shut, nary a piece of furniture in sight. If you’re lucky, the security guard loitering inside will point you to the small side street to your left.
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After walking down the street past a convenience store, a middle school campus and an athletics track, , you’ll see what’s left of another Le Cordon Bleu sign, in shreds, on a large iron gate. You may attempt to enter, but your path will be blocked by sand bags, torn planks of wood, and mounds of debris. Go past the gate and keep walking all the way to the end.
The school, when it finally emerges, is an innocuous building, the walls of its side entrance covered in immaculately pruned ivy. Inside, the lobby is suffused in a warm glow, light reflecting off yellow-painted walls, thick golden curtains, and perfectly buffed white floors.
Welcome, at last, to Le Cordon Bleu Shanghai.
This branch of the famed culinary school, established in Paris in 1895, is the first of its kind in China, and one of 21 around the world. It opened in a five-storey building just over two years ago, having enrolled its first class of students for pastry and cuisine courses in April 2015.
