Recommend cooking classes near Fairfax, VA?

May 10, 2006 8:55 AM

I'm interested in giving someone the gift of cooking classes near Fairfax, VA. Recommendations?

The person hasn't any food restrictions that I know of, and is already quite the cook with an excellent command of all basic skills and many intermediate skills.

From seeing this thread, and jacquilynne's questions in that thread, my requirements are as follows:

* Closeby -- a drive to DC would be really pushing it.
* Flexible scheduling including weekends an evening availability
* Focuses on specific types of cuisine (i.e. not a general skills class) -- Thai, Italian are of special interest
* Is a hands-on specialist class, not a hands-off demo-type class

Classes of varying durations are appreciated -- I know nothing about cooking classes, but imagine that they might range from single-session type events to packages of multiple/many sessions? And finally, if there are speciality forums / boards / websites about cooking classes, any pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

posted by NucleophilicAttack to food & drink (6 comments total)

Wegmans, the greatest grocery store of all time, has cooking classes. I don't see Thai or Italian, but the courses listed here look pretty fun.

There's a lovely Wegmans in Fairfax.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:18 AM on May 10, 2006

A couple of years back, the Post had a listing of a bunch of local cooking classes. This link should work. As you can see, there's a hell of a lot of them - but since the list is so out of date it's hard to say how many of these are still operating. Still, it should give you a good place to start.
posted by Jart at 9:32 AM on May 10, 2006

I'm hoping it's not improper to suggest this, but my mom, in the DC area, actually is starting a business that does stuff like this -- gift packages that are events or activities. Stuff like sailing classes or "a day behind the scenes with the zookeeper," so she may have some cooking class that she knows of, or some "cooking lesson with a famous chef" thing might be possible. If you end up wanting help setting it up, email me for contact info. Again, I hesitated to mention it, but I do think what she does is hard to find, and cool stuff.
posted by salvia at 11:01 AM on May 10, 2006

After review, it is unclear at best whether Wegmans offers cooking classes at its Fairfax store. On the one hand, the Fairfax stores lists "customer education" as an offering. On the other, the cooking school link only names a store in New York. My apologies. Crud.
posted by AgentRocket at 11:20 AM on May 10, 2006

I highly recommend Robyn Webb--she is a DC area chef who will come to your home for personal or group lessons. I had a lesson with her at my house with a few girlfriends and it was a lot of fun. In addition to the dishes she taught, we learned a lot of "chef secrets" like how to propoerly dice an onion. I was/am a total beginner--but she will customize each class for different types of cuisine or different levels of expertise.

Here's her site:
http://www.robynwebb.com/services/lessons.html
posted by eileen at 2:06 PM on May 10, 2006

Not to toot my own horn too much, but I also offer at-home cooking classes as part of my personal chef business.

So all you need to do is move your mother to Boston and you're all set.
posted by briank at 3:39 PM on May 10, 2006