May Kaidee: An Afternoon at a Vegan Cooking Class in Chiang Mai

It was a swelteringly hot day in Northern Thailand, and yet here I was, battling through a miniature jungle to go stand over an open flame for the next four hours. I’d booked into a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai, and was finally, hopefully, about to find out why my homemade green curries always tasted of… well, nothing.

On my very first trip to Thailand, May Kaidee restaurant in Bangkok was the first vegan restaurant I’d visited, and had seen plenty of repeat visits from me since. When I discovered that they also ran a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai, it was one of the first things I’d booked.

The cooking school is separate to their Chiang Mai restaurant, tucked down a residential street. From the road, you’d have little idea what was waiting behind the front gate, but push it open and you’ll find a short walkway, covered in a canopy of greenery, vines brushing against the top of your head, as you make your way into the open courtyard.

Why May Kaidee?

If you Google “vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai”, you’re not exactly going to be short of options. Chiang Mai is notoriously vegan friendly, and I can attest to that from my own time spent there. On the surface, having all this choice is an amazing problem to have, especially as vegans usually have to take the one option they’re given and get on with it.

On the other hand though, it can also get overwhelming. For most people, a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai is a one and done activity, so you want to make sure you’re picking something that gives you the experience you’re looking for.

For me, I didn’t even bother looking up options other than May Kaidee. I’d already tried their food multiple times in Bangkok, so I knew the quality was great and the vibe was casual and authentic.

Who is May Kaidee?

May Kaidee is a vegan Thai chef who first started selling vegan food from a stall near Khao San Road in 1988. Fast forward to 2026, and she’s got restaurants in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, and New York, plus a cooking school.

Sounds like a pretty straightforward, but impressive journey right? Well, it wasn’t all plain sailing. At one point, May had six restaurants across Thailand, Cambodia, and the US… and then 2020 happened. All of the Asia restaurants closed, and the US presence was drastically reduced back to just May operating as a solo cook.

Her talent and perseverance paid off though. While the business is still rebounding after the pandemic, if you walk into the Bangkok restaurant, you’ll hear laughter, chatter, and the sound of spoons clinking against bowls. The food is delicious, and the atmosphere makes you feel right at home.

What I particularly like about May Kaidee as a business isn’t just that the food is great (and it is), it’s that this isn’t some multinational corporate machine – everything you see today is the result of one woman, a wok, and a lot of ambition.

While the cooking class wasn’t run by May herself, I love that I can book a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai that goes directly towards supporting a homegrown business and employing local people.

What to Expect from the Class

The classes take place in a courtyard, where you’ll find four cooking stations arranged in the centre. On one side, there’s a prep area where the staff pre-prepare ingredients, wash up in between dishes, and keep their fridges. On the other, is a dining area with a long table, a place to wash your hands, and a bathroom.

As we walked into the courtyard, we were immediately met by the instructor, Diana, who handed us each a cold bottle of water and gestured to us to sit down. There were three of us in total taking the afternoon class: my husband, me, and a lovely American woman who was solo travelling through Thailand.

Diana walked us through the fundamentals of Thai cooking: sweet, salty, spicy, sour – making us repeat the words back to her and emphasising that no Thai dish is complete unless all four are present.

Each of us were handed a small recipe booklet to follow during the class and take home, along with a pen to take notes. As we’d go through the class, Diana would often throw out little tips or variants that weren’t in the book, so we’d scribble along as she talked.

To start us off, Diana walked us through the ingredients laid out on the table. Ever walked into a Thai restaurant and immediately had a distinctive, warming smell hit the back of your nose? You know the one that means you’re in for a good meal? That’s a blend of some of the core ingredients in Thai cooking: Thai basil, chillies, ginger or galangal, garlic, lemongrass, and makrut (also known as kefir lime leaves).

Here, we weren’t just peering into bowls and nodding along, we were touching the ingredients, tearing leaves, tasting chillies, smelling the lemongrass, and fully getting to know the ingredients.

Over the course of the next few hours, we learned to make:

• Tom Yum, Green Curry, and Red Curry pastes
• Peanut dipping sauce
• Tom Yum and Tom Kha Soup
• Curries using our pastes from earlier: Green, red, and massaman
• Pad Thai
• Summer rolls
• Mango sticky rice

In between dishes, we’d pause, sit at the table, and eat some of the food we’d made together. Each time I thought we were done, we were back up at the stoves to cook something else. Everything we made was shared, so when it came time to make curries, each one of us picked a different one, then shared the three bowls at the end of the tutorial.

When the class came to an end, we realised we’d made more food than three people could reasonably eat. Diana produced some takeaway boxes for us, and we split the food up between us.

The three of us left the class together, thanking Diana on the way out. As we wandered back into the town, I was already mentally planning the meals I’d make back home, my notebook safely tucked in my bag.

A Note for Solo Travellers

Even though I did this trip with my husband, I’ve often been the only solo traveller in a group. I’ve had times I’ve felt like a spare part, and times I felt part of the group – my sense is that this class is very much the latter. Because of the way the class is set up, all three of us were naturally sharing ingredients, sharing food, and chatting over the meals.

If you’re worried about going solo, this isn’t the kind of class where you’ll be given a solo cooking station off in the corner, all of you will work together as a group, and it’s easy to strike up a conversation when you’re exclaiming over the flavours! Plus, if you book onto a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai, you already know you have at least one thing in common with your fellow travellers.

Learning to Cook Thai Food

I think the biggest thing I took away from the class is that the ingredients really matter. I know, groundbreaking. But when you compare the fresh Thai basil in Chiang Mai to the wilted leaves I’ve been buying from Tesco, it makes sense.

Obviously my curries were going to taste bland if I was using lemongrass paste from a jar and dried makrut leaves from the corner shop. Once I got back to London, I went straight for Tian Tian Market, an Asian supermarket we have here. I picked up a bag of frozen makrut leaves, and even though they’re frozen, that smell just hits your nose as soon as you open the bag – it’s night and day from the sad dried stuff.

Diana’s mantra of “Sweet, sour, salty, spicy” also stuck with me. Since then, if I’ve made something that seems like it’s missing something, I mentally run through the ingredients in my head and see which of the four components I’ve missed. For example, Pad Thai usually involves brown sugar (sweet), lime juice (sour), soy sauce (salty), and chillies (spicy).

My absolute favourite takeaway of the class however was the Tom Yum paste. It forms the base of Tom Yum and Tom Kha soups, as well as Pad Thai, so it’s a super versatile paste. Making it is actually surprisingly easy – after cooking the ingredients in a lot of oil in a wok, whack it in a blender, and you’ve got a paste.

Diana took it one step further though: She showed us how to add it back into the wok with a little more oil, and cook it until it turns from a bright reddish orange to a rust colour.

“The paste lasts for a month in the fridge, but if you re-cook it and put it in a jar, it will last up to 3 months” she told us, stirring the paste with a spatula.

As soon as I got home, this was the first thing I made, immediately recooking the paste and transferring it to a clean jar. Well, it didn’t last 3 months, but that’s because it was too good not to use!

I also loved how versatile Thai cooking and ingredients are. When we were making the curries, green and red curry paste are essentially the same, but for the colour of the chillies. However, if you take a red curry paste, add some of the peanut sauce we’d made, suddenly you’ve got the makings of a massaman curry.

Likewise with the Tom Yum soup: add coconut milk and now you’ve got Tom Kha.

What Diana gave us wasn’t just recipes, it was the building blocks of a cuisine.

Would I Recommend It?

Without a doubt, yes. Booking a vegan cooking class in Chiang Mai was top of my list when we were planning this trip, and I’m so pleased we went with May Kaidee’s.

The class isn’t just a fun way to spend an afternoon, it gives you a memorable experience and skills you can take back home with you. I’ve written about this in previous posts, but I often bring wine back from countries I visit, then serve it with a dish from that country. It’s my way of trying to prolong the holiday memories, and share something that made me happy with the people in my life.

Well, I didn’t bring back wine from Thailand, but I did bring Tom Yum soup. My London kitchen might be a world away from Chiang Mai, but the smell of the spices lingering in the air helps bring me back there.

Need to Know: Booking

May Kaidee offers a lot of different cooking classes, from quick workshops to full on, 10 day courses. You can find the full range here, which includes classes in the Bangkok and NYC locations.

We booked into the afternoon class at 2pm. If you’re looking for it on the website, it’s the most popular class, titled “Thai Cooking”.

We booked directly through May Kaidee’s website at a cost of $50 USD per person. For the amount of food we made (and ate!) and how much fun the class was, it was well worth it.

Who is the class for?

• Solo travellers or groups
• Absolute beginners to experienced cooks
  • Diana starts with the fundamentals, to make sure everyone has the same grounding. You don’t need to be an expert.
• Vegans and non-vegans alike.
  • The class is vegan by default, but the flavours are the things that make the dishes. Even if you’re not vegan yourself, you’ll still be learning the crucial building blocks of Thai cuisine.

Who should not book it:

• Families with young children
  • You’re cooking in a courtyard over gas hobs with open flame. There’s a real risk of kids getting hurt, this is better to save until they’re older.
• Some travellers with accessibility needs.
  • Everyone’s needs are different, so check with the school beforehand. However, it’s worth noting that the cooking hobs are at a fixed height, and you will generally be on your feet for most of the class.
• People who hate cooking
  • Why did you even get this far in the post?

Final Thoughts

If you’ve been following along on the blog recently, you’ll notice I’m working my way through all my Chiang Mai adventures at the moment, from elephant sanctuaries to vegan hotels. I loved Chiang Mai, and May Kaidee’s cooking class is up there as one of my favourite memories from that part of the trip.

Northern Thailand is well known for its Isaan cuisine anyway, but actually getting to learn the recipes, appreciate the ingredient, and understand what goes into each delicious dish just adds to the experience.

Whether you take May Kaidee’s class, or another one, I’d highly recommend it. Getting to recreate your favourite recipes at home, long after your tan has faded, helps keep your memories alive.