Cooking School Vacations for Food Lovers

Spice up your summer with vacations for foodies!

Are you a gourmet cook, an unrepentant foodie or just a traveler who loves to experience local culture? With summer well underway, you might try looking into a little-known but increasingly popular option called culinary tourism. In as little time as a single morning or as much as several days, adventurous food lovers can take culinary vacations at cooking schools around the world, from rural Vermont to bustling Paris to tropical Chiapas, Mexico.

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Sometimes referred to as "cooking vacations," culinary tourism is a relatively new industry, according to the International Culinary Tourism Association. It encompasses a range of unique experiences for the would-be culinary traveler, including high-end gourmet tourism (such as the day-in-the-life-of-a-chef package offered by InterContinental Paris Le Grand Hotel), wine vacations, intensive baking and dessert-making programs, and even classes in "lost arts" like raising chickens or smoking meat and fish. Restaurants, hotels, cruise ships and private cooking schools are among those offering instruction in cuisines ranging from ever-popular French and Italian to Middle Eastern, Asian and Central and South American. You can even take a Lapland Food Course in Helsinki, Finland.

The good news is, you don't have to be a cooking show addict, have a kitchen full of cookbooks and gadgets, or know the difference between a Syrah and a Shiraz to participate in a culinary vacation. All you need is a love of cooking, a willingness to learn and a desire to travel. By the time you get back, you might find yourself enrolling in cooking school full time!

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Sources:

• "Culinary Vacations—Ideas from Deborah Krasner." The Splendid Table, January 13, 2007.
• Holliday, Taylor. "Have Spatula Will Travel." The New York Times, April 15, 2007.
• International Culinary Tourism Association
• "Pack Your Knives and Go." Chow.com.
• Perry, Marge. "Culinary Vacations." Newsday.com, June 12, 2009.