Martin L.
Yelp
I follow full-time travel vloggers Kara and Nate, who are on the verge of visiting their 100th country in just a few short years. They evolved over time to being more experience-minded - enjoying the moments, the people, the culture and the things to do, not just see. That's really cool because it aligns with the philosophy at Blueboard, the company I work for. We're an experiential company!
When I watched Kara and Nate's vlog on Barcelona, I was intrigued and inspired by their time at Barcelona Cooking. In a small group setting (no more than 8 people) in a private, professional kitchen 3 floors above the main tourist thoroughfare of Las Ramblas, several times a week you can join Barcelona Cooking's classes and learn how to cook traditional Spanish, and especially Catalan cuisine.
Hosted by professional a chef, and with varying dish selections, your group (or the group you meet and join) learns how to prepare each course, everyone participates in making everything, and at the end, you EAT what you made!
The cost starts at €65 per adult (about half price for kids, but check with them on age limitations, as you will be in a live kitchen with fire, hot dishes and lots of sharp knives), and includes all instruction, food and drink (water, red wine and white wine).
The meal we set out to prepare consisted of, for starters, pumpkin squash soup, traditional Spanish omelette and tomato bread. The main course was, of course, seafood paella, with prawns, cuttlefish, mussels and clams. The closer was crema Catalan - Catalunya's version of crème brûlée.
A couple of folks were no shows, so it ended up just being six, including me. There was a family of 4 from Indiana. The kids were 12 and 13; the younger boy was fascinated with the chef's knives. The other solo traveler was from Russia, spoke very little English and no Spanish, but was very interested in learning how to cook. She didn't know we were going to eat the food we cooked, so she ate dinner before she showed up and didn't have an appetite at all for our finished product.
Our chef was a gal named Kindra - born in the US, but raised in Barcelona. She's lived in and travels often to West Africa, and is fluent in English, Spanish and French. Her method of teaching was to show us (in a short example) of how to do something, and then let us have at it. We rotated stations so we all pretty much got to lend a hand in creating every dish. She was hands-off for the most part, and if someone made a mistake, she would chalk it up to us using "the other recipe."
Overall it was a great experience and well worth what seems like a steep price of admission. Consider, it included all those courses of food, free flowing wine and instruction in a professional kitchen by a trained chef. Oh, the laughs and smiles are included as well!