Learning to Cook, With Time Left to See Paris
SERIOUS cooks know they can go off to France and take immersion courses, but until recently, I hadn’t realized that it is possible to take quickie cooking classes: a few hours, a half day or a day.Although I visit Paris often, my visits are short, and I assumed cooking classes would involve a major time commitment. In fact, it is easy to pop into a class, connect with Paris in a different way and, as a bonus, improve your French. (Usually, but not always, there is an English translator.)
The range of choice is so enormous that I decided to explore my options at three principal cooking schools in Paris: École Ritz Escoffier, École Lenôtre and Le Cordon Bleu. All three schools have well organized Web sites, particularly Lenôtre, where classes are given only in French. At Cordon Bleu, amateur classes are translated simultaneously into English, as are many demonstrations; at Ritz Escoffier, everything is translated.
