Eighteen chefs head to Hanoi for Metropole Culinary Stars

Eighteen chefs arrive at Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi from 6 to 13 October for the second edition of Metropole Culinary Stars, an eight-day run of guest dinners built around live cooking rather than static menus.

The week opens on 6 October with Angelina Sunday Brunch with the Stars, an all-you-can-eat spread with live chef stations, free-flow drinks and a DJ set, the kind of format built to draw a crowd before the more technical dinners later in the week.

It builds toward two set pieces. On 11 October, the Metropole Culinary Showdown Dinner puts 14 of the visiting chefs through a 60-minute live cook-off in front of diners, judged on the spot rather than reviewed after the fact. The following night, an All Star Dinner gathers ten of the participating chefs for a nine-course menu that functions as the week's formal close.

More chefs, more services, more chances for something to go wrong live in front of paying guests.

A hotel betting on volume

Running 18 chefs through one kitchen over eight days is a logistics exercise as much as a culinary one, and the Metropole has leaned into that scale rather than trimming it: more names, more services, more chances for something to go wrong in a live cook-off watched by paying guests.

The first edition set the template the hotel is now repeating, and the format answers a specific complaint about guest-chef dinners: that a single set menu from a visiting name tells diners less than watching several chefs work the same ingredients differently, side by side.

Hanoi's wider pull

The series adds to a year in which Hanoi's dining scene has pushed harder on events built for visitors, from Vietnam Restaurant Week's return to Hanoi and Saigon to the city's own street-food staples still drawing diners to the stalls behind dishes such as bun cha. The hotel has not said whether a third edition is planned, but the jump from one cook-off to two suggests it is not done scaling the format up.