He is working in the restaurant business since 16 years old, starting with a 2 year professional school preparation and acquiring the professional certificate (BEP Hotellerie Restauration). Meanwhile working in France at restaurant L’Esturgeon (1 Michelin star). He experienced all of a restaurant’s sections to upscale brasserie (La Defense, Paris) and hotel pastry section (Concorde La Fayatte). He then returned for another 3 years of study and continued working this time in catering at Dalloyau. He was chef-de-partie in charge of pastry and desserts at Le Paris, Hotel Lutetia (1 Michelin star). His journey brought him to the Sheraton Hotel Bucharest as Executive Pastry Chef following the same position at One and Only The Palm Dubai. Thomas returned to Romania and is in charge of the pastry lab at Arc Bakery.
Thomas’s workshops for Société Gourmet have a very well defined concept: delicious and easy to make at home desserts for busy and refined people.

Ana graduated the French pastry school of Montbeliard under the guidance of master Eric Vergne.

She returned to Romania to make a difference for her family business and open new sweet perpectives with ZEXE Cofeturi. When feeling prepared, she opened her own business: ZEXE Braserie – an ambitious project that wants to continue and reinvent the Romanian inter-war pastry.
Ana has the techniques and knowledge that a great French school offers but she also has something very special: a deep respect for her chosen profession and an admirable personal modesty. Her workshops at Société Gourmet bring fine pastry to a passionate audience and translate professional know-how to home amateurs.

She followed cooking school in Bucharest, in her opinion ‘ a bad joke’. She then accomplished the „Cuisine & Culture” program at Institute Paul Bocuse in Lyon, an intensive bakery and pastry program in Barcelona, a perfecting in baking class in Madrid and did practice work in Abruzzo, Italy.
She has an unshakable calm and is a very generous and patient teacher.
‘For me, making bread, kneading the dough, fermentation and baking the bread, have a therapeutical effect. Somewhere in our ancestral memory, women were baking bread for their families and gathered everyone around the table. I am an amateur baker that makes artisanal sour dough bread.’ Carmen’s workshops for Société Gourmet are sourdough bread making, focaccia and ciabatta classes. You can find he at her own recently opened bakery (Flour Power).

‘ I traveled from east to west and north to south, my gastronomic curiosity has taken me on the Aegean Islands till reaching north of Norway, from the heart of London to south of Italy and from north of Portugal to Ukraine’s capital. I lived in different countries with different cultures, traditions and different people.
What is most important to me is not the restaurants that I worked for but the chefs i worked with and influenced me by their character: George Toma, Jose Azevedo, Magnus Ek, Shane Hughes, John Nocita etc. Besides these great chefs, many of them with Michelin stars, there are some other many other ordinary people that left a mark: the goats shepherd from the mountains of Crete, the Sami population, the reindeers shepherd, the shell hunters from the waters of the polar circle, the people raising black hogs in the south of Italy, the amateur wine producers from Portugal and the Albanian olive harvesters.
Now I travel within Romania in order to build my own culinary identity and discover the people, the stories, tastes and ingredients that are ignored of their great value. I am a firm follower of the slow food concept, nordic cuisine, preserving methods, curing and prefer getting my ingredients from nature or farmers.’

Madina Zhumadilova is an international pastry consultant and instructor. She started her pastry career in 2012 after quitting Diplomatic job and switching to early morning baker-assistant shifts at the local bakery in Almaty, Kazakhstan and pursuing her Pastry diploma simultaneously.
Since then Madina has founded a catering business in Astana, Kazakhstan and taught numerous Pastry Art Master-classes in Russia, Kazakhstan, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Germany and USA. Her main areas of teaching are Modern French Mousse Desserts and Classic Russian Cakes.
She assisted renowned Pastry Chefs: Antonio Bachour, Amaury Guichon, Nina Tarasova, Richard Hawke, Ksenia Penkina during their classes in Romania.
Madina holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from the George Washington University, USA; a Pastry Degree from Credo College, Kazakhstan; and a Pastry Diploma from ICEP Hotel School.
She believes that her unique vision towards Pastry Art was influenced by numerous cultures and cuisines, previous diplomatic career, traveling the word and an ability to think outside the “kitchen box.”