You’ll love cooking with our Chefs, who have extensive backgrounds in culinary arts.
Chef Mitchell Frieder has been in the restaurant business for over 45 years, first in the dining room, as Captain for Donald Trump’s restaurant, Trumpets, and for Leona Helmsley’s New York Harley Hotel. In the kitchen, Mitchell opened the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in San Francisco whose restaurant, Silks, was voted to be one of the best in the city. He then created Downtown Bistro, in Lancaster, CA which was voted to be in the Top-20 Restaurants by the L.A. Times. He also owned Max Catering at the Antelope Valley Country Club for 21 years. Mitchell has been a Chef Instructor at Le Cordon Bleu in Pasadena, and taught at the International Culinary School at the Art Institute for 13 years. He regularly goes to Shanghai to help culinary instructors there improve their Western cooking skills. Mitchell is also a Culinary Subject Matter Expert for the U.S. Department of Labor.
Chef Quincy Thongphuw graduated from Le Cordon Bleu, and has been cooking these twenty years since in restaurants and clubs throughout Long Beach and Orange County, including Orange’s own, Gabbi’s Mexican Kitchen. While he loves cooking his family’s native Thai food, Quincy has immersed himself in a broad range of cuisines, making tasty lumpia, bao, dumplings and sushi maki, has spent many years making killer kabobs, braised lamb shanks, and other Mediterranean dishes, and smoking up evil barbeques and grilling quality steaks.
Quincy joined Le Gourmet Culinary as our lead chef in 2019 and has been sharing his secrets with our wonderful students ever since. He makes it all happen at LGC!