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Cooking Classes With Celebrity Chefs
Alan Alda, the actor and TV host, is a man ahead of his time: To celebrate his 50th birthday 20 years ago, he took a one-week cooking class near Florence, Italy, taught by Giuliano Bugialli, the well-known cookbook author.
Alda--the star of MASH, The West Wing and The Aviator and host of Scientific American Frontiers on PBS--received the class as a birthday gift from his wife. To this day, he makes dishes he learned there, recently demonstrating a pasta, olive oil and tomato recipe on The Martha Stewart Show.
"It's a wonderful course, and Giuliano is a wonderful teacher," Alda says. "You get an understanding of Tuscan cooking, and it's great fun. It's nice to eat what you cook, and it's a nice communal experience."
Alda's experience predated today's love affair with celebrity chefs and cookbook authors, an ever-growing number of whom teach cooking courses, often in foreign locales. And, for the right price, you can sometimes hire these chefs--even superstars like Thomas Keller, who presides over the French Laundry in Yountville, Calif., and Per Se in New York City--to cook in your own home.
See our slideshow of the 10 celebrity chefs you can cook with.
Besides Keller--whose restaurants both have received a highly coveted three-star ranking from Michelin--chefs from some of the world's top restaurants either teach cooking or take on private gigs. These include other Michelin star recipients Anne-Sophie Pic, of the Maison Pic, in Valence, France; Raymond Blanc, of Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons in Oxfordshire, U.K.; Eric Chavot of the Capital and Angela Hartnett of the Connaught, both in London; and David Bouley, of Bouley and Danube, both in New York. All teach.
In addition, David Thompson, whose Nahm restaurant in London is the only Thai restaurant in the world to receive a one-Michelin-star rating, will lead a tour of Thailand in February featuring cooking classes and food market tours. And Francois Payard, the acclaimed pastry chef who runs his own patisserie and bistro in New York, is a twofer: He will not only cook meals in your home, but also teach you and your friends the fine points of baking there.
Courses taught by chefs and cookbook authors like Bugialli, Patricia Wells and Giuliano Hazan--who is himself the son of legendary cookbook author Marcella Hazan--vary widely in format. Some, like Pic's, entail a demonstration by the chef in the kitchen of his or her restaurant, followed by a meal of the dishes prepared. Others, like Bugialli's, Wells' and Hazan's, are far more hands-on and can last as long as a week. They are held in places like the French or Italian countryside and can include everything from truffle hunts to tours of wineries and olive oil factories.
Regardless of their length or contents, cooking school programs have grown steadily popular over time. Dorlene Kaplan, editor and publisher of Shaw Guides, which publishes an online directory of cooking schools, says the number of programs Shaw lists has jumped 10% to 15% each year since it began in 1989. Its latest edition contains close to 1,000 schools; 60% are in the United States, and many are in Europe--particularly in Italy and France--while others are in Mexico and Asia.
"Cooking is something most people are interested in; it has universal appeal. Even if they don't cook, they enjoy being around food, going to food producers and markets," Kaplan says, noting that the classes "offer a more in-depth cultural experience than going on a sightseeing trip."
Wells, who teaches in Paris and Provence, says half her students don't even cook much. "It's a great vacation. You come--everything's been taken care of for you. It's ready-made and attractive to people who are very, very busy."
Jenni Muir, a food writer based in London and author of Cooking School Holidays, a coffee-table book that highlights programs from Malmo, Sweden, to Melbourne, Australia, believes cooking school students "often find it exciting and glamorous if they can associate with famous chefs. There's a general interest in learning to cook as a hobby, in preparing dishes people have seen in restaurants or demonstrated on TV, because so many chefs are on TV now."
Rick Tramonto, executive chef of TRU, one of Chicago's finest restaurants, says he cooks in private homes because he enjoys it.
"With the right client, it's a ton of fun. When you cook for people who want you to come into their home, it's quite an honor, very humbling, because they can choose anyone, and they want you," says Tramonto, who has cooked for the likes of Michael Jordan, Oprah Winfrey, Rupert Murdoch and Bill Gates, either at TRU or in their home.
There are no doubt other factors at play here: Chefs for hire make big bucks for only a few hours' work.
Tramonto, for example, charges a $30,000 to $50,000 fee for his own services each time he cooks privately; that doesn't include the additional $50,000 to $80,000 you have to pay for a multi-course tasting menu and wine for 20 or more, plus service and shipping fees, and travel and other expenses. A meal cooked privately by Keller starts at $10,000--and that's just for the ingredients.
Attending a cooking school can also be pricey: Wells' five-day courses are either $4,250 or $4,500, a fee that does not include lodging or air fare, or, in some cases, certain meals.
Despite the expense, the rewards of this study can be great, as many have found.
Like Alda, Judith Mitchener, who studied with Hazan near Verona this summer, enjoyed the camaraderie of her classmates, who hailed from New York, New England, California and Illinois, among other places.
"When you like to cook, it's a lot of fun being with other people who like to cook and talk about cooking techniques," says Mitchener, a 72-year-old housewife from Sumner, Miss., who took the course with her 41-year-old daughter, Julia M. Turnipseed, a housewife also from Sumner. She says she learned "a lot about Italian meat. We got great demonstrations on pounding veal. It was fun to learn it together, and to be with my child."
Brian Huggler, a 40-year-old broker with Coldwell Banker Hubbell Real Estate in Lansing, Mich., is such a devotee of Wells' cookbooks and classes that he studied with her for a third time this fall, taking a course on fish.
"One thing I've learned from her is that cooking doesn't have to be elaborate. Good food can be prepared very quickly and very simply," he says. "And I've also learned to eat according to season, buy what's fresh in the market--asparagus in the springtime, potatoes, carrots, root vegetables in the fall. But that can be hard to do, living in Michigan."
Wherever you live and whatever foods you have access to, we've compiled a list of some of the best cooking classes and chefs for hire. But don't tarry: The hottest courses sell out months in advance, and chefs like Keller require half a year's notice for their services.
See our slideshow of the 10 celebrity chefs you can cook with.
