A night out -- in a restaurant kitchen
People used to go to restaurants so they wouldn't have to cook.
Now some are paying to slave away in restaurant kitchens.
Even if it sounds like something Chef Tom Sawyer would dream up, diners are paying big bucks to cook their own dinners in restaurant cooking classes.
A friend went with a date to a cooking class at Corks last weekend. It cost $96 per person. Chef Jerry Pellegrino had done most of the prep work, but his guests had plenty to do: cranking out homemade fettuccine, stirring risotto, mixing chocolate biscotti dough, roasting rack of lamb.
They drank a lot of wine along the way and enjoyed Pellegrino's outgoing personality, so the cooking never felt like work, my friend said. It was more like the night's entertainment. And the dinner they eventually sat down to was worth the price, he said, especially considering the amount of wine and cognac they washed it all down with. They were there for about four hours.
And no, they didn't have to do the dishes when it was all over.
Corks has been offering cooking classes since the restaurant installed a second kitchen about a year and a half ago, Pellegrino said.
(Yes, I've been a little Pellegrino-centric lately, what with his plans for a "living mojito bar," his attempted City Hall coup and his interest -- apparently gone now -- in the former Brass Elephant site. I'll try to branch out, but the guy's been interesting lately.)
Pellegrino teaches up to 12 people at a time in the classes. People can sign up for a class individually, but sometimes a whole group of 12 comes in for a private party -- he recently did a class for someone's 50th birthday -- or as a corporate event.
Pellegrino said he read and article somewhere that compared cooking classes to Outward Bound-style corporate bonding events of years past.
"Everybody gets in the kitchen, everybody works together for kind of a common cause," he said. "With the advent of the Food Network and everybody getting to see the behind-the-scenes thing, people are very interested."
Even people who don't cook.
At the end of the night, Pellegrino gives participants copies of the recipes they've made. A lot of them are left behind.
"Eighty percent of the people who watch the Food Network never cook," he said. "I have the feeling that 80 percent of the people who take my cooking classes never go home and cook."
You have to crank for your supper at a Corks cooking class. Sun photo by Kim Hairston
Comments
LV, did your research reveal that Jerry Pellegrino started out as a graduate student at JHU? I think he was in biophysics, if memory serves. Science's loss was the restaurant world's gain.
Not making this up--Captcha says flawed science.
Dahlink, I'd heard something similar and asked Pellegrino about it when I had him on the phone. He said he'd been at Hopkins med school for six years when he decided he'd chuck it all for a restaurant career. I thought that was a surprising background for a chef, but here's what Pellegrino said: "Food and wine -- it's all about science." LV
Posted by: Dahlink | March 13, 2010 3:33 PM
I wanted to also mention that Sotto Sopra on Charles Street has an amazing cooking class about once a month with chef Bill Crouse. I've done several of the classes and it's loads of fun, you learn great little cooking tips and you get to eat the incredible food you learn to make afterwards! It's also less expensive as the cooking class mentioned above. Sotto Sopra also offers a Chef for the Day where you can go into the kitchen with Chef Bill and cook like the pros!!
Posted by: Kellie Reardon | March 15, 2010 9:19 AM