I WANT COOKING CLASSES · THE WORLD AT THE STOVE
Learn to cook the dish where it was born.
Reviews of the best cooking classes on earth, kitchen by kitchen. Fresh pasta in a Tuscan farmhouse, a market walk and the wok in Hoi An, curry paste on a Chiang Mai farm, tagine in a Marrakesh riad and sushi in Tokyo. We read the listings so you book the right class.
Worth the airfare
Three kitchens you can only learn in one place.
You can take a cooking class almost anywhere now. But pasta rolled by a Tuscan nonna, the market-and-basket-boat morning in Hoi An, and a tagine steaming in a Marrakesh riad belong to these places and nowhere else on earth.
Tuscany
Pasta by Hand in a Tuscan Farmhouse
Out in the hills above Florence, you roll and cut fresh pasta on a floured board the way an Italian grandmother taught hers, then layer a tiramisu and pull a tray of something out of the oven. The wine is from the estate and the glass is never empty, lunch is the long Tuscan kind on a terrace over the vines, and you leave knowing your way around a rolling pin. There is nowhere better on earth to learn to cook Italian.
- 1 Florence: Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
- 2 Florence: Pasta & Tiramisu Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
- 3 Florence: Pasta Cooking Class with Unlimited Wine
Central Vietnam
Market, Basket Boat and Wok in Hoi An
A morning in Hoi An is the most complete cooking day in Asia: you pick herbs and produce at the riverside market, paddle out in a round basket boat through the coconut palms, then cook fresh spring rolls, a clay-pot dish and a Vietnamese pancake over the flame with a local family. Market to table in one bright, green, hands-in-everything morning, and a coast that does it like nowhere else.
- 1 Cooking Class Hoi An:Local Market, Basket Boat, Fishing & Cooking
- 2 Hoi An Cooking Class(Market,BasketBoat Crabfishing&Cooking Class)
- 3 From Hoi An: Market Tour, Basket Boat Ride and Cooking Class
Morocco
Tagine in a Marrakesh Riad
Behind a plain door in the medina is a tiled courtyard kitchen where you learn the slow magic of a Moroccan tagine: the spice blend, the bread proved and baked, the lamb and preserved lemon left to steam under the conical lid. You eat under the open sky with mint tea poured from a height, in a riad you would never find on your own. This is Marrakesh cooking the way the city actually does it.
- 1 Marrakech: Moroccan Cooking Class with Pickup
- 2 Marrakech: Traditional Moroccan Cooking Class & Market Visit
- 3 Marrakesh: Moroccan Dishes Cooking Class with a Local Chef
The class everyone books
If you only book one class.
More travellers reach for this one than any other on the site. A safe first booking in a cuisine you are still getting to know.
The classics
The World’s Most Popular Cooking Classes
Rome, Florence, Hoi An, Hanoi, Chiang Mai. The classes travellers reach for first, in the kitchens they most want to cook in.
Where to cook
Pick your cuisine.
Italy for pasta and pizza. Vietnam for the market and the wok. Thailand for curry paste from scratch, Japan for sushi and knife work, Spain for paella, Morocco for the tagine. Each country, with the dishes it teaches best.
Which kind of class
How hands-on do you want to be?
The style of the class matters as much as the cuisine. Three ways to spend it, depending on whether you want flour to the elbows or a glass in hand while someone else does the chopping.
From Rome to Tuscany
Nobody teaches pasta like Italy.
This is where you learn to cook the food the rest of the world copies. Fettuccine and ravioli rolled by hand near Piazza Navona, a Tuscan farmhouse where the nonna shows you tiramisu and the wine is from the vines outside, pizza stretched in a Naples kitchen, ragu simmered in Bologna. Apron on, hands in the flour, a long table to eat it at, and the wine glass refilled the whole way through.
See the best cooking classes in Italy →Kyoto, Tokyo & Osaka
Japan is all about the technique.
Cooking in Japan is a lesson in precision and care. You learn to roll sushi and shape nigiri under a chef who has done it ten thousand times, simmer a real bowl of ramen, fold gyoza and pull dashi for miso. A morning at Tokyo’s Tsukiji outer market or a Kyoto townhouse kitchen, knife skills you keep for life, and a respect for the ingredient you cannot fake.
See the best cooking classes in Japan →The best part
Then everyone sits down to eat what they made.
A great class is never just the recipe. It is the strangers who walked in as strangers and end up passing plates, the cook who tells you which market stall has the best tomatoes and why the order of the pan matters, and the moment the food you made yourself lands on the table. You leave full, a little wiser in the kitchen, with a dish you can cook for people back home.
Browse every cooking class →Market mornings in Asia
In Southeast Asia, the class starts at the market.
A market walk in Hoi An to learn the herbs and a basket-boat ride to the kitchen, curry paste pounded by hand on a Chiang Mai farm, fresh spring rolls and a steaming bowl of pho in Hanoi. These are bright, fragrant, hands-in-everything mornings where a local cook shows you the herbs, the balance and the wok, and you eat what you make for lunch.
- 1 Half-Day Thai Cooking Class at Organic Farm in Chiang Mai
- 2 Hanoi Cooking Class: Culture, Local Market & Meaning CSR Impact
- 3 5 Traditional Dishes Hanoi Cooking Class with Market Trip
By time at the stove
How long do you want to be cooking?
Some evenings you want one dish rolled properly and a plate to show for it. Some mornings you want the market walk and a few dishes over the flame. And some days you want the whole thing, farm to table, dawn to dusk. Pick the length, we will point you at the class.
A couple of hours
Roll one thing, properly.A short, focused class: fresh pasta by hand or a single regional dish, start to finish, then sit down and eat what you made. In the kitchen and out the door before the evening is gone.
Half a day
Walk the market, then the wok.The proper half-day: a guide through the morning market to pick herbs and produce, a basket-boat ride or tuk-tuk to the kitchen, then three or four dishes over the flame with a cook who grew up making them.
A full day at the farm
Spend the whole day cooking.The trip you plan a holiday around: out to an organic farm, curry paste ground by hand in a stone mortar, five courses across the day, recipes to take home and a long table to share them at.
Behind a riad door
Morocco cooks low, slow and full of spice.
In Marrakesh and Fes the class starts in the souk, choosing olives, preserved lemons and the spices for ras el hanout, then moves to a tiled riad kitchen. You prove and bake your own bread, build a tagine and leave it to steam under the cone, roll couscous by hand, and eat in the courtyard with mint tea poured from on high. The most aromatic cooking morning in North Africa.
See all 23 cooking classes in Morocco →By city
Pick a city and step into the kitchen.
Rome for fettuccine and tiramisu. Florence for pasta with Tuscan wine. Hoi An for the market and the wok. Chiang Mai for curry paste on a farm. Marrakesh for tagine in a riad. Tokyo for sushi and knife work.
By cuisine
Every kitchen worth the trip.
From Italy and Spain to Thailand and Japan, Vietnam to Morocco to Mexico. Browse by the country whose food you want to learn to cook.
Market to table
A perfect day in the kitchen.
First cooking class and not sure how it goes? Here is the shape of a full market-to-table day, from the morning stalls to the long lunch you cooked yourself.
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