Your Experience

Learn to cook Hue specialties at Madam Thu Restaurant, with optional market or countryside experiences that connect every dish to its source.

Getting started

Arrive at Madam Thu Restaurant and check in for your selected option. Your host introduces the format of your cooking class and confirms whether you have chosen the standalone cooking class, the market-to-table experience, or the countryside tour and cooking class. After a brief outline of the schedule, you move straight into the first hands-on segment of your chosen variant.

What to expect

Madam Thu Restaurant

This is the heart of every option, where you prepare and enjoy Hue dishes in a practical, step-by-step cooking class. It is where your market finds or farm-harvested produce, if selected, are turned into a full meal.

Features

• In the cooking class at Madam Thu Restaurant, you learn to master iconic Hue dishes in a cozy, homestyle setting, guided through each stage from preparation to plating. This authentic cooking class focuses on practical techniques you can repeat at home.
• A standalone cooking class option, the Cooking Class with Restaurant Dining variant lets you focus fully on kitchen time, without additional market or farm segments. Instruction stays centered on cooking methods and flavor balance.
• Lunch or dinner is included, so you sit down at the restaurant to savor the farm-to-table dining experience using the dishes you have just cooked. Your meal is the culmination of your work in the kitchen.

Traditional countryside market

For guests who pick the From Market to Table option, the experience starts by sourcing ingredients at a local market before returning to the restaurant.

Features

• Traditional market shopping for fresh ingredients introduces you to a bustling countryside market environment, where stalls are filled with produce used in Hue cuisine. You walk the aisles alongside locals choosing vegetables and herbs.
• You cook dishes using your market finds once back at Madam Thu Restaurant, turning the exact ingredients you selected into your menu. This creates a direct link between what you see at the market and what ends up on your plate.

Madam Thu Farm and Hue countryside

If you choose the Countryside Tour and Cooking Class variant, the day begins outside the city, where food is grown and daily life follows a rural rhythm.

Features

• Hands-on farming at Madam Thu Farm lets you plant, water, and harvest organic crops yourself, learning how key ingredients are grown before they reach the kitchen. This segment connects you with the source of the fresh produce used in your cooking.
• A countryside experience away from city crowds gives you time to observe the peaceful rhythm of Hue’s countryside, matching the off-the-beaten-path experience highlighted in this tour. You see how rural life shapes local food traditions.
• A relaxing herbal foot bath after cooking is included in this variant, using fresh garden herbs to create a soothing soak. This relaxing herbal foot bath takes place once your dishes are prepared and enjoyed, rounding off the countryside-focused option.

Wrapping up

Your experience concludes back at Madam Thu Restaurant after your included lunch or dinner. Since transport is not provided, you are free to make your own way onward, whether you head back into Hue’s center or continue exploring the surrounding countryside.

Highlights

• Step into Madam Thu's kitchen to learn Hue family recipes from a local host, gaining skills and confidence to recreate them after your trip.
• Arrive at Madam Thu Restaurant, meet your host and move into the kitchen where your hands-on cooking session at the restaurant begins.
• Your booking includes a cooking class at Madam Thu Restaurant plus a full lunch or dinner, so you learn first then sit down to enjoy the meal.
• Follow step-by-step instruction to create iconic Hue dishes and pick up practical techniques you can reuse in your own kitchen back home.
• Upgrade your class with a pre-session visit to a traditional market, where you choose fresh ingredients that you later turn into Hue dishes.
• Enhance your day by adding hands-on farming at Madam Thu Farm, a peaceful countryside walk and a soothing post-cooking herbal foot bath.