How to Choose a Cooking Class Abroad: A Guide for Food Travelers

Cooking classes have become one of the most popular travel activities 
in Europe. In almost every destination with a recognizable food culture — 
Tuscany, Provence, Andalusia, the Amalfi Coast, the Greek islands — 
you will find dozens of options competing for the attention of visitors 
who want to learn something about local food.

Most of them are not worth your time.

Not because cooking classes are a bad idea. They are an excellent idea. 
Learning to cook a dish in the place where it comes from, with local 
ingredients and under the guidance of someone who actually cooks that 
food every day, is one of the most direct and memorable ways of 
connecting with a food culture.

The problem is that the majority of cooking classes marketed to 
tourists are designed primarily for ease of delivery and tourist 
satisfaction rather than genuine learning. They use simplified 
versions of traditional dishes, ingredients that are chosen for 
reliability rather than quality, and teaching approaches that 
prioritize sending visitors home feeling good rather than actually 
knowing something.

This guide explains what to look for — and what to avoid — when 
choosing a cooking class abroad.

WHO IS TEACHING

The single most important factor in any cooking class is who 
is doing the teaching.

There is a significant difference between a cooking class taught 
by the person who actually cooks this food every day — a home 
cook from the region, a farmer who prepares dishes from their 
own garden, a grandmother who learned these recipes decades ago 
and has been refining them ever since — and a class taught by 
a professional chef who has designed a tourist-friendly curriculum 
around dishes they know participants will enjoy.

Both can be valuable. But they teach you different things.

A professional chef teaching in a well-equipped kitchen can teach 
you technique — knife skills, timing, heat management, plating. 
A local home cook teaching you in their actual kitchen, using 
the ingredients they actually use, can teach you something 
harder to find: the real food of a place, as it is actually 
cooked, rather than a polished version of it.

The most memorable cooking experiences tend to be the ones 
where the teacher is the source of the knowledge rather than 
a conduit for it — someone cooking their own food and sharing 
the recipes and techniques that are genuinely personal to them.

Generations of Flavour in Málaga is a direct example of this. 
The tapas cooking class is taught alongside Spanish grandmothers 
who share antique family recipes — not a simplified tourist version 
of Andalusian cooking, but the actual food these women make for 
their own families, shared with the generosity that comes from 
genuine pride in what you know.

WHERE IT TAKES PLACE

The setting of a cooking class matters more than most people realize.

A class that takes place in a purpose-built tourist kitchen — 
designed specifically for visitor cooking experiences, equipped 
with standardized tools, located in a tourist area — produces 
a different experience from a class that takes place in a 
real kitchen or on a real farm.

When you cook in someone's actual kitchen, or in an outdoor 
cooking space on a working farm, or in a lemon garden on 
the Amalfi Coast, the context changes what you are learning. 
You understand the food in relation to the place it comes 
from rather than in isolation from it.

Golden Dream Farm on the Amalfi Coast runs cooking classes 
in a kitchen garden overlooking the sea, using ingredients 
harvested from the farm that morning. The setting — the 
lemon trees, the coastal views, the smell of the garden — 
is not incidental to the cooking. It is part of what you 
are learning.

Similarly, Virginia's farm on Andros Island in Greece 
teaches traditional Andriot cooking in a farm kitchen 
using vegetables from the garden just outside. The 
knowledge you gain is inseparable from the place 
where you gain it.

WHAT INGREDIENTS ARE USED

The quality and provenance of the ingredients used in 
a cooking class tells you a great deal about what 
kind of class it is.

Genuine cooking classes use genuine ingredients — 
the actual products of the region, sourced from 
local producers or grown on the property where 
the class takes place. These ingredients have 
a flavor and character that reflects where 
they come from and how they were grown.

Classes designed primarily for tourist satisfaction 
often use ingredients that are chosen for 
convenience and consistency — supermarket 
products that are reliable but generic, 
that could come from anywhere and taste 
like it.

The difference matters enormously. You cannot 
learn what Sicilian cooking really tastes like 
using tomatoes from a Dutch greenhouse. You 
cannot understand what makes Amalfi limoncello 
distinctive if the lemon you are using is a 
standard commercial variety rather than a 
Sfusato Amalfitano from a terrace above the coast.

When evaluating a cooking class, always ask — 
or look for clear information about — where 
the ingredients come from.

WHAT YOU ACTUALLY LEARN

A cooking class should leave you with knowledge 
you can apply when you get home.

This sounds obvious. It is frequently not achieved.

Many cooking classes are designed around the 
experience of doing something enjoyable in an 
attractive location — the actual learning is 
secondary to the atmosphere, the wine, the 
social interaction. There is nothing wrong 
with this. But if you want to actually 
improve your cooking and deepen your 
understanding of a food culture, it 
requires a class that takes the teaching 
seriously.

The best classes teach you the reasoning 
behind the recipes — not just what to do, 
but why. Why does this pasta shape work 
with this sauce? Why is the olive oil 
added at the end rather than during 
cooking? Why is this dish made with 
this specific combination of ingredients?

Understanding the reasoning is what 
allows you to adapt what you have 
learned when you cook at home — 
to reproduce the dish properly 
even when you cannot find the 
exact ingredients you used in class.

WHAT SIZE IS THE GROUP

Group size affects everything about a 
cooking class — the amount of attention 
you receive, the depth of the teaching, 
the opportunity for questions, and the 
overall atmosphere.

Large groups of twelve, fifteen, or 
twenty participants are common in 
popular tourist destinations because 
they are more profitable. They are 
also significantly less educational — 
the teacher cannot give individual 
attention, the kitchen becomes crowded, 
and the experience becomes more 
performance than learning.

Smaller groups — four to eight participants — 
allow a genuinely interactive session 
where questions can be answered properly, 
individual technique can be observed 
and corrected, and the conversation 
can go wherever the group's curiosity 
takes it.

When evaluating a cooking class, 
the maximum group size is one of 
the most important practical details 
to check.

HOW TO FIND GENUINE COOKING CLASSES

The most reliable way to find genuine 
cooking experiences abroad is to look 
for classes that are hosted directly 
by the people who actually cook the 
food — home cooks, farmers, and local 
food producers rather than cooking 
schools or tour operators.

These experiences are harder to find 
through standard booking channels, 
which tend to favor the larger, 
more commercially visible operations. 
But they exist across Europe — 
in farm kitchens, in family homes, 
in lemon gardens and olive groves — 
and they offer a depth of learning 
and authenticity that purpose-built 
tourist cooking schools rarely match.

GENUINE COOKING EXPERIENCES ON FARMIYO

Farmiyo features cooking experiences 
hosted directly by local families, 
farmers, and food producers across 
Europe — each one using real local 
ingredients, taught by people who 
actually cook this food every day.

From tapas classes with Spanish grandmothers 
in Málaga and farm-to-table cooking in 
an Amalfi lemon garden to Ikarian 
longevity cuisine on a Greek Blue Zone 
island and traditional Andriot cooking 
on Andros — every cooking experience 
on Farmiyo is hosted by the person 
whose food it actually is.

Explore cooking experiences across Europe → farmiyo.com