- Written by: Chefluencer Editorial Team
For one week in late September, the Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel stops being a hotel and starts acting like a culinary terminal. Chefs land from Copenhagen, Sardinia, Ho Chi Minh City, Vienna, and New Zealand. Between them: 22 Michelin stars, seven places on the World’s 50 Best lists, four Green Stars, and more passports than an immigration officer would care to stamp before lunch.
It is the 25th World Gourmet Festival, Asia’s longest-running international food gathering, one that predates the Michelin Guide’s arrival in Thailand. What began in 2000 as a bold idea has grown into a fixed point on the calendar. The Silver Jubilee edition, 22–28 September, is curated by Kristian Brask Thomsen, the Danish strategist behind Dining Impossible, whose talent lies in turning dinners into narratives.
Bangkok’s own stars
The festival doesn’t land in a vacuum. Bangkok today counts Sorn, the country’s only three-Michelin-starred Thai restaurant, where Ice Supak Jongsiri has taken southern Thai cooking to an unprecedented level of precision. Around him stands a generation that has placed the city firmly in international view. Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn leads Le Du and Nusara, fixtures on Asia’s 50 Best and World’s 50 Best. Pichaya “Pam” Soontornyanakaj, named Asia’s Best Female Chef 2024, runs Potong, a restaurant as much about narrative and heritage as flavour. Deepanker “DK” Khosla has turned Haoma into Bangkok’s Green Star benchmark, proving sustainability can be ambition rather than compromise. Chudaree “Tam” Debhakam at Baan Tepa has secured two stars and a 50 Best place before turning thirty, marking her as one of the region’s youngest chefs at that level. And the Sühring brothers, Mathias and Thomas, continue to run Thailand’s only two-star German restaurant, one of the city’s most consistently acclaimed tables.
Put together, they form not just a backdrop but a cohort that now meets the world on equal terms.
A programme of encounters
The 25th edition runs on three nightly tracks:
- Gourmet Discovery – collaborations never seen before.
- Gourmet Encounters – Thai talent paired with global guests.
- Gourmet Icons – solo menus from international names.
The headline? A six-hands dinner uniting Eric Vildgaard of three-star Jordnær in Copenhagen with Mathias and Thomas Sühring. Another: Ton cooking alongside Vaughan Mabee, the New Zealand chef redefining his country’s food landscape with venison, alpine herbs, and volcanic smoke. These are one-night menus, cooked once and never again.
The hotel as a stage
For one week, the dining rooms of Anantara Siam stop serving their usual audiences and slip into costume. The celebrations open with a gala in the hotel ballroom and close with a brunch in the Parichart Court garden — less farewell, more encore. Afternoons bring panel talks, wine and cocktail workshops, and an afternoon tea by Wong.
Shintaro, the hotel’s Japanese enclave, is handed over to Choi Ming Fai Jan, Jimmy Ophorst, and Peter Cường Franklin, turning a familiar setting into a crossroads of Tokyo, Phuket, and Saigon. Madison, normally a steakhouse of polished wood and ribeye, becomes something closer to a furnace: Dave Pynt of Burnt Ends setting sparks alongside Prin Polsuk, while Ton steps in with Vaughan Mabee for a menu that promises smoke, precision, and more than a little improvisation. Biscotti, the Italian stalwart, is given over to Grégoire Berger, Francesco Stara, and Pam Soontornyanakij — a trio likely to bend pasta into new shapes. Spice Market, once a byword for Thai nostalgia, hosts a six-hands summit between Eric Vildgaard and the Sühring brothers. Guilty, the hotel’s Peruvian-inspired newcomer, goes crowded with Paco Méndez, Francisco Araya, Santiago Fernandez, DK Khosla, and Tam Debhakam. And at the centre of it all, The Lobby Lounge becomes Janice Wong’s workshop, where desserts are less plated finales than edible installations, staged under chandeliers.
A festival with history
This Silver Jubilee brings more Michelin stars than any previous edition. It is the first time multiple World’s 50 Best restaurants cook in Thailand within a single week. Pricing stretches from THB 1,800 to 18,500, unusually broad for events of this calibre. And sustainability moves centre stage, with four Green Star chefs showing what regenerative gastronomy can look like in Bangkok.
When the World Gourmet Festival launched, Bangkok fine dining meant hotel restaurants and imported names. Michelin hadn’t crossed the border. Twenty-five years later, the city has its own three-star Thai restaurant, its own chefs on the global awards circuit, and a dining scene watched across the world.
That context gives this year’s edition a different weight. The World Gourmet Festival isn’t introducing Bangkok to anyone anymore. It’s confirming what the city has become — a place where the world comes to cook, and where Thai chefs now stand on equal footing with their guests.
World Gourmet Festival 2025 Snapshot
22–28 September at the Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel
Tickets: including early-bird offers and full programme details, are available at worldgourmetfestival.asia
Updates and behind-the-scenes coverage can be followed on Instagram at @worldgourmetfestivalbkk on Instagram