Taylor's Culinary Institute

At TCI, what I learnt inside the houses goes into the curriculum.

in association with

TCI believes something I believe: experience earned over years in working kitchens belongs in the classroom and should count as scholarship. A certificate is one way into this trade. The long road through real kitchens is another, and the people who took it know things worth putting on the record. TCI runs a continuing professional programme for exactly those people. We agreed on that before we agreed on anything else.

The institute

Taylor’s Culinary Institute is part of Taylor’s University in Subang Jaya, Selangor. The university’s Hospitality & Leisure Management discipline is among the world’s top thirty in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026. TCI’s culinary, pastry and beverage programmes are where serious young cooks in the region come to train.

The institute calls its method the living classroom. Students work directly with industry chefs, across diplomas, short courses and the Master Class series at Truffles Restaurant, the working kitchen and dining room on campus.

I began teaching at TCI in 2021. In June 2026 the relationship became an appointment as Adjunct Professor, in the Faculty of Social Sciences & Leisure Management. It carries full faculty standing: I assess, I contribute to the curriculum, and I answer to the same academic framework as every other member of the faculty. I wanted it that way.

What I bring

For twelve years I have worked inside some of the great luxury houses. I am Krug Ambassade Chef and Gaggenau’s spokesperson. I have partnered with Hennessy, I was the first ambassador in Malaysia for The Plan and for Mepra, and I have done long-form work with The Macallan, Mortlach and BMW. Those houses taught me how a brand is built: how an identity takes shape, how meaning sits in small details, and how a maison earns the standing the public gives it.

Cookery schools rarely teach that. Cooks learn to cook. Few learn to build the identity, the marketing and the intellectual property that make good cooking pay its way in luxury hospitality. That is the gap I teach into, from inside the houses and to the standard of the institution.

For twelve years the work has carried European luxury craft into the Asian hospitality industry. At TCI the next generation learns it as a matter of record, and not as anecdote.

The professorship covers two subjects, culinary sustainability and restaurant entrepreneurship, and around them short courses, public seminars, community service and the links that tie the school to the houses and the wider trade. The sustainability teaching comes from the indigenous gastronomy and conservation work I lead through Serumpun Sarawak. The entrepreneurship teaching comes from fourteen years and six restaurant concepts in Malaysia (Brasserie Enfin, Enfin by James Won, Bouchon Enfin, Shin’Labo, MeatMore and BadBoyCooks), twelve of those years in fine dining, and from the Be Kind pivot during the pandemic. I teach the closures as openly as the openings. A restaurant that closed has as much to teach as one that lasted.

How I teach

I teach in three ways, and each does something the other two cannot.

The inspiration lecture

The lecture is where I meet a cohort for the first time, and I use it to ask the one question technique cannot answer: why are you in this kitchen? I am often asked to find a student’s passion. The truth is that this generation finds it harder to summon than mine did, so I don’t give a pep talk. We talk frankly about practice and discipline, and about what cooking asks of a person who wants to do it properly for a lifetime.

The experience workshop

In the workshop we cook side by side, on techniques the curriculum names but rarely lets a student feel under an experienced hand. Practice is the mother of all skills, but practice with nobody watching turns into bad habit. So I correct, I demonstrate, and I let them fail while someone is there to see it.

The Master Class series at Truffles

The Master Class runs at Truffles Restaurant, TCI’s working professional kitchen, and the format rarely changes. Students work in the institute’s kitchens, then I mentor them on fine-dining menu design and plating, then they cook a high-profile collaboration dinner under real pressure. I set the menu’s theme and balance and keep it within what the cohort can deliver. The ideas and the cooking are theirs. They cook, they serve and they face the room, and I am there to stand behind them. The guests have come to meet the students.

TCI’s student-life features have called the masterclasses “engaging, interactive, and intelligent” and “a dive into the minutiae” of culinary arts. Those are the students’ words. I could not write a curriculum that teaches what they learnt to someone who wasn’t in the room.

The dinner, December 2023

On 9 December 2023 Truffles Restaurant hosted the Chef James Won Collaboration Dinner. I invited the guests and TCI hosted the evening. Her Royal Highness Tuanku Sultanah Hajjah Kalsom of Pahang and His Excellency Axel Cruau, Ambassadeur de France en Malaisie, were at the table. The students cooked the courses under guidance, and I spoke to the room.

I paired the wines and champagnes, which my years of work with the champagne and spirits houses made possible. I set the dining room with what the maisons had taught me: which whiteware suits each dish, which tableware keeps service steady, and which order of courses reads as one line of thought. I name BMW for German precision and Mepra for Italian styling deliberately, because I have worked beside both teams and learnt how each thinks about the materials of luxury.

Then there was protocol. Classical service has a structure: the order of courses, the pace, and who is served first when royalty or state guests are present. You respect that structure before you change it. That night the guests, the place and the culture all called for changes, and each one was made on purpose. The students saw the protocol kept where it had to be kept and set aside where that served the table better.

Most of it is detail. Each bite is sized for the mouth, generous enough not to look mean and small enough that nobody has to wrestle a fork in company. Proteins are deboned wherever a state guest should not meet a bone. Sauces are rested until they hold on the spoon and stay off the linen as the bite is lifted. Those are three of many.

The students saw all of it from the inside: the decisions, the running of the room, and what it takes to cook for guests at that level. No syllabus can teach that in the abstract. Tatler Malaysia covered the evening. TCI called it “an invaluable learning experience”, and the students used the same words. The dinner is on TCI’s record. The lesson stays with the students who cooked it.

What comes back

I get more back from TCI than I bring.

The students give back their words and their work. “Engaging, interactive, and intelligent”, “a dive into the minutiae” and “an invaluable learning experience” are their descriptions, on TCI’s public channels. Yuda Bustara, an alumnus, has taken his TCI training on to a public profile of his own. The institute’s mentoring has been credited as a key driver for students who go on to win gold at WorldSkills and similar international competitions. That record belongs to the institute, and my professorship is one part of it.

TCI gave back its pride. In late 2024, when the French government made me Chevalier de l’Ordre du Mérite Agricole, TCI marked it with an official statement, “Honouring Gastronomic Greatness: A Culinary Maestro Chef James Won Receives the Prestigious Ordre du Mérite Agricole.” The institute treated the honour as its own, and the standing of the lectureship belongs to TCI as much as to me.

The Embassy of France in Malaysia, in its 2024 award announcement, named the teaching directly: “gives back and passes on to younger generations, as he does at Taylor University.” The teaching became part of the citation.

Questions answered

What does he teach there?

Culinary sustainability and restaurant entrepreneurship, with short courses, public seminars and community service around them. The sustainability teaching comes from the indigenous gastronomy and conservation work of Serumpun Sarawak. The entrepreneurship teaching comes from fourteen years and six restaurant concepts in Malaysia, the closures as openly as the openings.

How is the teaching structured?

In three ways: the inspiration lecture, the experience workshop, and the Master Class series at Truffles Restaurant, TCI’s working kitchen and dining room, where students cook a collaboration dinner for real guests.

How can an institution get in touch?

Write to connect@chefjameswon.com and tell me what you are building.