Prominently featured on the third floor of Santa Monica Place, The Gourmandise School welcomes everyone from basic bakers to culinary connoisseurs, leading the way on everything edible through foundational skill training and meal preparation courses. Now approaching its 13th anniversary, the mall mainstay is under the care of three female leaders, including co-owner and founding chef Clémence De Lutz.
The chef grew up in the food world, but didn’t begin her true journey until fully entrenched in the entertainment industry at 20th Century Studios, then known as 20th Century Fox. De Lutz noted that she didn’t think the “very serendipitous process” would end with opening a cooking school, but the metamorphosis was already at hand.
“I started selling cookies from my cubicle, and then I transitioned into selling pastries, and then [transitioned] into teaching about making pastries, and I was approached to open up something rather than renting space all over town,” De Lutz said.
Beginning with Gourmandise Desserts, she eventually began teaching at Culver City’s Surfas Supply Store, spending the next six years in many small-kitchen settings before opening the school in 2011 alongside Hadley Hughes. When Hughes stepped away from the business in 2015, an old 20th Century friend stepped in as a new partner, that being former executive Sabrina Ironside. After over two decades in the world of film, television and licensing; Ironside saw a chance to apply her craft to growing Gourmandise, what she deemed an “exciting and interesting” change of pace as General Manager.
Blending into De Lutz’s food knowledge and Ironside’s marketing and operations background was the third major piece of the Gourmandise puzzle, a teaching assistant-turned-Vice President of Operations Claire Hutchens. She started as an assistant and receptionist for De Lutz as a college student, cultivating a work ethic that has grown to include overseeing 45 staff members.
“This school has influenced everything about my life … I love teaching people about food, and that cooking is supposed to be fun and enjoyable, that you can do it at home, and also imparting wisdom about … the nature of food, and what holistic cooking looks like, and using whole ingredients in here … and creating something beautiful and delicious from them,” Hutchens said.
For De Lutz, teaching the beauty of food is to bring cooking back to “the basics” of ingredient-based endeavors and building a learning environment akin to absorbing knowledge from a family member as a child. Aside from cuisine courses like Thai cooking or fresh pasta making, Gourmandise teaches the technique of the trade, including how to properly use a knife and tips for food pyramid staples like beef and eggs.
“It’s incredibly hands-on, it’s not demonstration style learning here … you’re learning all the things that are kind of missing, context-wise, in a recipe,” De Lutz added. “You might look at a really well-written, detailed recipe and it’s [a lot], so that’s where we bridge the gap. We’re really here to teach people how to do things well [and] understand the science behind it and the alchemy of cooking.”
The teachers themselves add their own flavor of positivity and support, standing out due to their specialties and their attention level to every student. Each class at Gourmandise begins with a specialty chef greeting every person and gauging their skill level, working with groups according to their food IQ.
“To be a good teacher, you have to [have] a special kind of person … be somebody who listens, who’s watching the class, who can lead the class, and [who] can nurture them and look at the different skill levels,” Ironside said. “I think that’s really important. We look for people who can have a strong background in [their] specialty, and then also have the personality to be a teacher as well.”
A unique mix of skill and sensibility has kept Gourmandise thriving, shifting from a smaller kitchen space at the mall to its current abode while staying alive during the COVID-19 pandemic any way it could. De Lutz said they took advantage of everything from government grants and delivering ingredient boxes to beginning virtual cooking classes for companies that began to work remotely. The corporate team-building side of the business has been a giant boon with a return to in-person classes, adding another exciting component to the main ladies’ lives.
“Getting people out of the office and into the kitchen, they work in groups and they have to work together to create a delicious meal that they end up sitting down and eating together,” Hutchens said. “People’s [personalities] come out and they’re like ‘no, add more spice, add more chili flakes,’ and [other] people [say] ‘oh my gosh, no, you’re crazy.’ So all of these bonds are formed when people are working together and [they] have an environment [to] sit down and enjoy what they’ve created.”
Gourmandise gives back to the business world with the largest corporations and smaller, local partners alike, particularly with area farmers at Santa Monica’s Downtown Farmers Market. Along with the rest of the school’s ingredients being locally-sourced and sustainable, De Lutz and her team take their fresh produce from the farmer’s market, now to the point where they make orders ahead of time.
For De Lutz, starting from the source is more than just a statement on cooking, its a way to shift buying habits back into the hands of local vendors.
“All of these small things that we do talk about in class, [it’s] because we want people to know what a big difference it makes when you make small changes in your daily habits for your community around you, and for the greater world’s community,” De Lutz said. “And just more local, fresh, seasonal ingredients just makes your food taste better.”
The farmers market environment also serves as an example of the female bonds the trio has made in Santa Monica, which Hutchens (born and raised in the city) says is a community with “a lot of female empowerment.” De Lutz added that it’s “a little bit like a badge of honor” to be successful in the male-dominated cooking landscape.
“When we watch the farmers market with all the other chefs, there is such a strong tie with other female business owners that look out for each other, to call each other like, ‘did you hear about egg prices?,’” De Lutz said. “I think there’s been a really strong undercurrent of female business owners in the food community in the last 15 years that have created an incredible network.”
For more information about the Gourmandise School and a full class schedule, visit thegourmandiseschool.com