Short-term (weeklong?) international cooking / baking programs
Hi all, I am headed to business school this fall and planning to travel throughout Europe in June / July. Does anyone have any recommendations for shorter culinary programs (open to cooking and baking, however, I am a lifelong vegetarian, so anything with an emphasis on butchery is less interesting). Any recs greatly appreciated; thank you!
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Patricia Wells and Faith Willinger are two food writers who happened to be born in the US and then adopted their new countries (France for Wells, Italy for Willinger) about 40 years ago. Both terrific food journalists, authors of cookbooks and other food books, cooking teachers. And Wells was the first and maybe the only furriner who was food critic of a major French newspaper.
Wells teaches in Paris and in her Provence home, but this (2022) turns out to be her last year of teaching.
http://www.patriciawells.com/cooking-classes
Willinger give a combination meal and cooking course in Florence.
https://www.faithwillinger.com/
General suggestions.
* Look at tourist and/or aggregator sites (tripadvisor, viator, etc) which give recommendations of cooking classes by cities. You know your projected itinerary - use that to look for good classes.
* Look more for baking than for cooking classes, to get more vegetarian options.
* There ARE now specific vegan and vegetarian classes in Europe (things have improved from years ago when such were not available or very rare).
* Look for classes in local food specialties, e.g. pizza in Naples, tapas in Barcelona.
* If you have enough of a another language, consider taking a course in it. But there are plenty in English.
They are pricey ($450 for 1-day, $1290 for 5-day, but each day is a full 8 hours, 9am-5pm. You get to use all the equipment and machinery and they feed you too. A good value and worth every penny, in my opinion.
Check out sfbi.com, if you are interested.