COOKING TRAVEL GUIDE · LEARN TO COOK THE TRIP
The recipe you bring home is the best souvenir.
Reviews of the best cooking classes around the world, city by city. Fresh pasta in Bologna and pizza in Naples, a wok class on a Chiang Mai farm, sushi at a Tokyo counter and tagines in a Marrakech riad. We sift the listings so you book a kitchen worth the morning.
Worth the airfare
Three classes that could only happen where they do.
You can take a cooking class almost anywhere now. But the basket-boat market run in Hoi An, the farm-grown curry paste outside Chiang Mai, and pasta rolled by hand in Bologna belong to those kitchens and nowhere else.
Hoi An
Market, Basket Boat & Wok
Vietnam’s prettiest old town does the most complete cooking day on earth. You shop the riverside market with a chef, paddle a round bamboo basket boat out through the water-coconut palms, then cook the classics, fresh spring rolls, banh xeo, clay-pot fish, in a riverside kitchen. The herbs are picked that morning, and the whole thing runs on the river light.
- 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
Chiang Mai
A Thai Class on an Organic Farm
Out past the Chiang Mai moat the classes happen on working organic farms, where you pick the lemongrass and galangal yourself before you cook. Pound a curry paste in a stone mortar, fire a wok over real flame, and learn the four-way balance of sweet, sour, salt and heat that makes Thai food sing. A market stop on the way, a herb garden, and a table that never stops.
- 1 Half-Day Thai Cooking Class at Organic Farm in Chiang Mai
- 2 Chiang Mai: Cooking Class, Market & Thai Herbs Garden Tour
- 3 Thai and Akha Cooking Class in Chiang Mai
Bologna
Fresh Pasta in an Emilian Kitchen
Italy’s food capital teaches the thing it does best: pasta made entirely by hand. You roll the sfoglia thin with a long wooden pin, fold tortellini one at a time the way the local nonne do, and turn out tagliatelle for a ragu that has simmered all morning. A glass of Lambrusco, a kitchen that smells of parmesan, and the recipes you will actually cook at home.
- 1 Bologna Local Pasta Cooking Class, Ragu, Spritz, Wine & Gelato
- 2 Pastamama, Home Cooking Classes at Grace’s Home
- 3 Bologna: Pasta and Tiramisu Cooking Class with Wine
The class everyone books
If you only take 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, Chiang Mai, Hanoi, Hoi An. The classes travellers book first, in the kitchens they most want to cook in.
Where to cook
Pick your cuisine.
Italy for fresh pasta and pizza. Vietnam for market-to-wok days. Thailand for curry paste and the four-flavour balance, Japan for the sushi counter, Morocco for tagines and souk spice, Mexico for mole and masa. Each cuisine, with the kitchens it does best.
Which kind of class
What kind of class do you want?
The format matters as much as the cuisine. Three ways to spend a morning at the stove, depending on the time you have and what you want to walk away knowing.
From Bologna to the Amalfi Coast
Italy teaches the food you already love.
No country runs a better kitchen for visitors. Fresh egg pasta rolled by hand in Bologna and Florence, wood-oven pizza and ragu in Naples, tiramisu and free-flowing Chianti at a Tuscan farmhouse table, cicchetti and risotto in Venice. You shop the morning market, cook beside someone’s nonna, and finally learn why it tastes like that.
See the best cooking classes in Italy →Marrakech & Fez
Morocco starts in the souk.
A Moroccan class begins with a spice walk: cumin and saffron, preserved lemons, ras el hanout measured out by the handful. Then into a riad courtyard to build a tagine from scratch, knead and bake bread, roll couscous by hand and pour the mint tea from a height. The smells of the medina, a rooftop table, and the dishes you came all this way to taste, finally made by you.
See the best cooking classes in Morocco →The best part
Everyone ends up around the same table.
A great class is never just the recipe. It is the cook who hands down the trick their grandmother taught them, the strangers chopping beside you who become a table of friends by the second course, and the moment everyone sits down to eat what they made together. You come home with flour on your shirt, a notebook of recipes, and a meal you will cook for years.
Browse every cooking class →Across Southeast Asia
In Asia, the market is the classroom.
Every great class here starts among the stalls: a basket of herbs in Hoi An, lemongrass and galangal at a Chiang Mai farm, the chilies and fish sauce of a Bangkok wet market. Then you pound the paste, fire the wok over real flame, and learn the balance of fresh, hot, sour and sweet that makes the food unforgettable. A local cook, a riverside kitchen, and a table that keeps filling up.
- 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 how hands-on
How deep do you want to get in?
Some evenings you just want to roll pasta and sit down to eat it. Some mornings you want the market, the herbs and the whole spread. And some days you want to cook from dawn shop to a feast that runs all afternoon. Pick the depth, we will point you at the class.
A couple of hours
Just get your hands in the dough.A short evening class: roll fresh pasta or shape pizza with a local cook, sit down to eat what you made, and still have the night ahead of you.
Half a day
A market, then the wok.Walk a morning market for the herbs and chilies, then cook four or five dishes start to finish: pound the curry paste, balance the flavours, eat the lot at the table.
A full day in the kitchen
Shop, cook, feast, all day.The whole thing: a market basket, a basket-boat ride out to the herb gardens, a long hands-on session and a feast of everything you made. The day you plan a trip around.
Precision you can taste
Japan is the most exacting kitchen you’ll cook in.
From a Tokyo sushi counter to a Kyoto townhouse kitchen, Japanese classes turn cooking into a quiet craft: shaping nigiri to the gram, pleating gyoza, rolling maki, simmering a clean dashi, folding a perfect tamagoyaki. A patient chef shows you the small movements that take years to master, then you sit and eat exactly what you made. Half a morning or a full hands-on session.
See all 36 cooking classes in Japan →By city
Pick a city and start cooking.
Rome for pasta by hand. Hoi An for the market and the basket boat. Florence for a Tuscan farmhouse table. Chiang Mai for farm-grown curry paste. Marrakech for tagines and souk spice. Tokyo for the sushi counter.
By cuisine
Every cuisine worth a morning at the stove.
From Italy and Spain to Thailand and Vietnam, Japan to Morocco, Mexico to India. Browse by the food you most want to learn to cook at home.
Market to table
How a great class flows.
First time booking a class and not sure what to expect? Here is the rhythm of the best ones, from a morning at the market to a long table at the end.
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