Anyone can eat the food. This is where you learn to make it.
Fresh pasta in a Florence kitchen. A Hanoi market run before the wok goes on. Tagine on a Marrakech roof. Reviews of the cooking classes worth building a day around, with what each one costs and how much of it you actually cook.
Four cooking classes that decide a food trip.
The ones travellers book before the flights are even paid for, and what each morning actually involves.
01The Tuscan onePasta Cooking Class with Unlimited WineHand-rolled pasta five minutes from the Duomo, and a glass that keeps being refilled while you roll.
02The farm morningHalf-Day Thai Cooking Class at Organic Farm in Chiang MaiPicked in the garden, pounded in a mortar, eaten at a long table outside Chiang Mai.
03The market runHanoi Cooking Class: Culture, Local Market & Meaning CSR ImpactHanoi at seven: the stalls first, then the kitchen, then everything you carried home on a plate.
04The riad kitchenMoroccan Cooking Class & Marrakech Market Visit with Chef KhmisaSouk shopping with a cook who argues about spice, then tagine under the roof terrace.
Six countries that teach their own kitchen best.
Italy for pasta and the wine that follows it. Vietnam for the market. Thailand for the farm. Morocco for the souk. Spain for rice over fire. Japan for broth and a fish market dawn.
Italy: pick the dish before you pick the city.
Rome turns out fettuccine, ravioli and tiramisù inside three hours. Florence pours while you roll. The south cooks at home, with somebody correcting your hands. Three ways to spend an Italian afternoon.
The cooking classes travellers book most.
Every class we have reviewed →A farm kitchen outside Chiang Mai, two pasta tables in Florence, a Roman kitchen that gets three courses out of you in an afternoon. These fill first.
1
Half-Day Thai Cooking Class at Organic Farm in Chiang Mai
Start with hotel pickup and a short visit to a Chiang Mai market before heading to Smile Organic Farm. Guides such as Lily, Luna, K, Love, and Cici lead you through Thai herbs, curry paste, stir-fries, soup, curry, and spring rolls. Choose vegetarian or vegan dishes, control the heat, and cook at your own station.
From · $29
Read our review →
2
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $21
3
3 in 1 Cooking Class near Navona: Fettuccine, Ravioli & Tiramisu
from $83
4
Pasta & Tiramisu Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
from $56
5
Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
6
Hanoi Cooking Class: Culture, Local Market & Meaning CSR Impact
from $39
7
5 Traditional Dishes Hanoi Cooking Class with Market Trip
from $35
8
Cooking Class and Lunch at a Tuscan Farmhouse with Local Market Tour from Florence
from $145
The best cooking classes start at a market stall.
Nobody learns a cuisine from a printed recipe card. You learn it arguing over herbs at six in the morning, carrying a bag you cannot identify half of, and watching somebody decide lunch by what looked good on the day.
What a cooking class actually costs.
Every class on the site, grouped by price. The cheap end is not the weak end: it is mostly somebody cooking at home and feeding you properly.
Home kitchens, Asian market mornings, and the Florence pasta table that keeps pouring.
The standard half day: market run, three or four dishes, lunch you cooked, wine poured with it.
Private chefs, farmhouse days with the drive built in, and the Paris pastry rooms.
Vietnam teaches breakfast, lunch and the bicycle in between.
Every class in Vietnam →
Hanoi starts at a market and ends with five dishes on a low table. Hoi An puts you in a round bamboo boat on the way to the herb garden. Both cost less than a main course at home.
Hoi An: market, basket boat, then the wok
The morning runs through the market, out on the water in a round bamboo boat, and back to a garden kitchen for banh xeo and white rose dumplings.
Hanoi: five dishes and the market they came from
Old Quarter stalls first, then pho broth, bun cha over coals and a spring roll you rolled badly and ate anyway.
Pho, banh xeo, bun cha: where to learn each
Northern broth, southern pancake, central noodle bowls. The country changes cuisine every few hundred kilometres and the classes follow it.
Pick the dish, not the postcode.
Some people plan a trip around a city. Others plan it around learning to make pasta, or paella, or a bowl of ramen that tastes like the one they remember. The second is easier to book.
Thailand cooks outdoors, and you eat what you pound.
The Chiang Mai farms grow the herbs you will use, hand you a mortar and let you decide how much chilli you can really take. Bangkok does the same at speed, with a market stall as the first stop and a curry paste you made yourself.
Every class in Thailand →
Four things that decide which cooking class suits you.
How much you cook rather than watch. Whether the market run is included or the ingredients arrive already chopped. Whether the kitchen can feed a vegetarian, a coeliac or a nine-year-old. And whether three hours ends with a proper lunch or a tasting plate. Settle those four and the rest is easy.
Three dishes that do not travel.
A recipe survives a flight. The technique, the local ingredient and the argument about how it is really done do not.
Tiramisù, made properly
Egg yolk beaten with sugar until it stops tasting of egg, savoiardi dipped fast enough that they never go soft, and coffee strong enough to hold its own against the mascarpone. Roman classes fold it into a three-course afternoon. The Veneto, where it was invented, treats it as the entire point of the day.
- 13 in 1 Cooking Class near Navona: Fettuccine, Ravioli & Tiramisu★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 7,376 reviews
- 2Pasta & Tiramisu Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 6,708 reviews
- 3Pasta Making Class with Wine, Limoncello, and Dessert★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 3,177 reviews
Paella, over fire
The pan is wide so the rice lies one grain deep, and nothing is stirred once the stock goes in. What everyone wants is the socarrat, the caramelised layer stuck to the base, which is why the fire matters more than the recipe. Barcelona classes start at the Boqueria; Valencia will tell you the dish is theirs.
- 1Paella Cooking Experience & Boqueria Market Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 3,661 reviews
- 2Barcelona Paella Cooking Class with Market Visit, Tapas & Sangria★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,531 reviews
- 3Barcelona Interactive Spanish Cooking Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 2,155 reviews
Pastry, from the lamination up
Butter folded into dough, chilled, folded again, until the layers are too thin to count. Lisbon presses it into tins with a thumb, fills it with custard and fires it hot enough to blister the top. Paris rolls the same idea into croissants. Both are technique you cannot read your way into.
- 1Pastel de Nata Baking Class★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 2,106 reviews
- 2Paris Croissant Small-Group Baking Class with a Chef★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 910 reviews
- 3French Croissant Baking Class with a Chef★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 712 reviews
Japan hands you a knife and expects attention.
Ramen in a Kyoto factory where the broth has been going since morning, sushi after a walk through the Tsukiji outer market, gyoza folded until the pleats stop being ugly. The rooms are small, the pace is exact, and the good slots go weeks out.
- 1Ramen Cooking Class at Ramen Factory in Kyotofrom $131
- 2Ramen & Gyoza Cooking Class in Tokyo with Local Supermarket Visitfrom $122
- 3Ramen Cooking Class at a Ramen Factory with Souvenirfrom $127
Four cooking classes that will not wait for you.
Most kitchens can find you a seat the day before. These four run on market hours, one seating and a table that holds eight.
- 01Tokyo Tsukiji Fish Market Tour and Sushi Making LessonThe fish market trades in the morning. There is no afternoon version of this one.
- 02Paella Cooking Experience & Boqueria Market TourLa Boqueria closes on Sundays, so a weekend trip has exactly one market morning in it.
- 03Cooking Class and Lunch at a Tuscan Farmhouse with Local Market Tour from FlorenceA farmhouse cooks one lunch a day for one group. When that seating is gone, it is gone.
- 04Pastel de Nata Baking ClassPastry rooms are small and the dough is made to a headcount. Turning up on the day does not work.
Hanoi, Hoi An, Chiang Mai, Bangkok, Ubud: one kitchen a week.
Hanoi
Hoi An
Chiang Mai
Bangkok
Ubud
Siem Reap
The newest cooking class reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Authentic Thai Cooking Class and Farm Visit in Chiang Mai
Read our review →
Half Day Guided Thai Cooking Class in Chiang Mai
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Private Half-Day Thai Cooking Class in Chiang Mai
Read our review →
Northern Thai Cooking Class in Chiang Mai in a Countryside Home
Read our review →
Traditional Northern Home Cooking Experience with Raunkaew Yanon Family
Read our review →
Morning Cooking Class in Traditional Pavilion with Beautiful Garden – Chiang Mai
Read our review →
