Top 5 cooking classes in Dubai

If you’re overwhelmed by the choice of dining options in town (like I am sometimes!), here’s my round-up of 30 favourite restaurants in Dubai that may help you make a choice 🙂 Alternatively, if cooking is more your thing, read on for a selection of cooking classes.

If you’re stuck in Dubai over the summer months, what can you do to escape the humidity and searing sun? Well head indoors to the sizzling heat of a professional kitchen instead! We’ve rounded up cooking classes in Dubai that are running over the summer (and beyond), so here are FooDiva’s top 5 picks, in alphabetical order.

• Culinary Boutique – a plush café-cum-cooking school on Jumeirah Beach Road owned by an Emirati lady. The cooking classes span Emirati cuisine (naturally), Mexican and seafood, paleo and pasta, right through to tapas and Thai. What’s caught my eye though is a knife skills workshop. I think that’s what I need to brush up on! The daily class schedule ranges from 1.5 to three hours, with the cost spanning AED295 to AED495.

• Fairmont Palm (Chef’s Palette) – I tried the Arabian Delight cooking class recently, which runs for 1.5 hours. In a gleaming Gaggenau cooking studio complete with projecting screen, two chefs taught our small group of six (they can cater for up to 12 people) how to make four Arabic mezze dishes – hummous, moutabel, babaganoush and fattoush salad (see photo above). Interactive, fun and educational, you get to leave with a personalised apron and recipe cards. This particular class was AED155 (as does a Mediterranean cooking class), but Fairmont runs a number of other themed classes ranging from AED135 for a Friday quickie to AED555 for premium produce like foie gras, Wagyu beef, forested mushrooms and chocolate. I guess the latter must be Valrhona!

• ICCA – a dedicated culinary training centre in Knowledge Village for both professional and amateur cooks, accredited by City & Guilds London. The classes are hosted in a training kitchen facility, under the guidance of industry-trained chef trainers. The set menu plans for every cuisine under the sun are available in modules of three, six or nine classes that are each three to four hours long, starting at AED1,500 for three sessions. Classes run from Saturday to Wednesday in the mornings (9.30am-12.30 pm), and in the afternoons (1.30-4.30pm).

• SCAFA – a cooking school and café (incidentally open for daytime dining over Ramadan) hidden in the depths of JLT that runs two types of programmes. The fundamentals of cooking consists of ten classes on Monday and Thursday from 6-9pm. The fundamentals of pastry covers five classes on Saturday between 3-6pm. You can sign up per individual class (for instance fish or meat or macaroons) or for the whole programme. Fees are AED500 per class, AED2250 for five sessions, or AED4500 for all ten sessions.

• Top Chef – this warm and inviting converted villa, also on Jumeirah Beach Road feels like walking into a show home and kitchen. Three courses are on offer here – culinary art and flavours of the world both teach how to cook a three course meal over two hours at AED475 and AED445 respectively – whilst chef to be covers two courses over 1.5 hours at AED395.

Have you tried any other cooking classes that you would highly recommend?

A bientôt.

FooDiva. x

From the heat outside to the heat of the kitchen: top 5 cooking classes in Dubai – a #FooDiva round-up https://t.co/qvIgAbEf0A

— FooDiva (@FooDivaWorld) June 8, 2016

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