Overview

The Undergraduate Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Program is designed for students who aspire to have careers in the fields of gastronomy, culinary arts, and restaurant management. Offering a rich curriculum integrated with restaurant management, the program is the first of its kind in Turkey. The program provides a solid foundation in the field of Gastronomy and Culinary Arts with its theoretical and practical foundation courses, while offering a comprehensive education with its courses on advanced culinary techniques and restaurant management. During the four-year period of study, students have the opportunity to put their theoretical gastronomy knowledge to work in their practical classes.

The Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Program boasts an exclusive partnership with Le Cordon Bleu International. Through this partnership, the program profits Le Cordon Bleu International’s extensive experience and deep-rooted education in the field of culinary arts. Students take their culinary art courses directly from Le Cordon Bleu’s instructor chefs and use Le Cordon Bleu’s education materials to excel in Le Cordon Bleu techniques.

The program starts out with basic culinary and patisserie art, gradually offering a richer curriculum packed with practical courses that introduce students to classical, modern and advanced techniques and teach them international culinary techniques, eventually concluding with the management dimension with a rich array of restaurant management courses. Prior to practical culinary courses, students first receive demo training at the Gastro-Auditorium from Le Cordon Bleu chefs. Following their training, students start preparing the recipes they have learned in the Main Kitchen, Patisserie Kitchen, and Multi-Purpose Kitchen. The program also offers business administration courses, including managerial accounting, applied economics, food and beverage management and services, marketing, legal aspects of restaurant operations, planning and inspection of food and beverage businesses, and entrepreneurship. Another pillar of the program is the courses, such as food safety and hygiene, food science, nutrition, gastronomy culture, Turkish culinary heritage, and food and sustainability, that build a strong foundation for practical gastronomy courses. The Undergraduate Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Program aims to offer an education that is both theoretical and practical. To this end, the program vests its students with a broad vision through its rich array of required courses as well as a broad selection of electives, including Local Ingredients of Anatolia and their Place in Gastronomy, Food Styling for Visual Media, Restaurant Feasibility Studies, and Culture Through Film.

The program provides an interactive, multimedia-based education enriched with sectoral projects, case studies, and mandatory internships to develop students’ practical skills. Our students serve the food they prepared in their International Cuisines and A La Carte Cookery classes to the taste of our guests at L’Atelier Bleu, our 101-person demonstration restaurant. Students also conduct sensory analyses for research purposes at the Sensory Analysis Laboratory as well as organize tasting activities.

Our Undergraduate Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Program endeavors to prepare students for professional life through kitchen demonstrations, seminars, and summer internships over the course of their four-year period of study. During the summer of their sophomore and junior years, and in their eighth semesters, students complete three sectoral internships, 250 days in total, to transform their theoretical knowledge into practice and gain hands-on experience. The program furnishes students with 1010 hours of internship experience by the end of their studies and helps them build their own professional network before their graduation. Internships are completed at national or international food and beverage businesses, reputable restaurants, four or five-star hotels, first class holiday resorts, airlines, or cruise ships. The Gastronomy and Culinary Arts Program also takes pride in its international faculty with extensive academic experience. Through its distinguished faculty members, the program aims to prepare its students to become graduates vested with the necessary knowledge and skills to start their own business or take up chef or senior management positions at international hotel chains, reputable restaurants or professional food and beverage businesses.

At graduation, in addition to the Bachelor’s Degree diploma awarded by Özyeğin University, students are also honored with a certificate issued jointly by Le Cordon Bleu International and Özyeğin University.