The Wide World of Cooking Schools

READERS' TOP QUESTIONS How do I find a reputable school? Well, it turns out that it's not as straightforward as you'd think. Unlike hotels or even voluntourism organizations, the best of which are vetted by respected agencies, cooking courses are often one-offs, run by people you've never heard of. There's no global clearinghouse or accrediting agency, and as a result, basic Web searches can be more confusing than productive. The best place to start is the official website of the country or region you're interested in visiting. Tourism bureaus often evaluate and approve culinary courses along with other travel resources. Visitbelgium.com, for example, devotes a page to 12 top schools around the country, including one in Brussels with a weekly class taught in English and a name that says it all: Mmmmh! British Columbia's website, hellobc.com, lists 10 well-established cooking schools, searchable by region. (Interested in harvesting local greens on Vancouver Island or grilling lamb in the Okanagan Valley wine country?) For now, the closest thing to a clearinghouse is cookingschools.com, which is owned by the job-hunting specialist Monster. It caters to food-service professionals seeking serious semester-long programs, but some of the listed schools offer weekend or one-day classes appropriate for travelers. This is also a good time to tap into social networks for more under-the-radar listings. Foodie forums on chowhound.com and epicurious.com are good places to seek recommendations. Similarly, tripadvisor.com has a surprising number of cooking school threads (last count: 1,260). Finally, keep an eye out for foodtrekker.com from the International Culinary Tourism Association. The site will launch later this summer and is slated to include a global guide to cooking courses, culinary tours, and farm-to-table dinners. How will I know if a school fits my needs? You just have to ask the right questions: (1) Is the class in English? Sounds obvious, but if you find yourself trying to flambé, dictionary in hand, more than your dessert will go up in flames. (2) Is this course for beginners? You don't want to be bored or, perhaps worse, in over your head with a cleaver. (3) What's the ratio of students to instructors? If it's higher than 6:1, you might not have much of an opportunity to get your questions answered. (4) How long will we actually be in the kitchen? At some schools, you can spend half your time in a tour bus or socializing over cocktails. (5) Will we cook dishes I can prepare at home? If all the recipes rely on an obscure Laotian root or some über-expensive industrial appliance, you might be better off watching the Food Network. What's a good price for a class? There's no easy answer to this one. Prices are determined by the desirability of the location, the level of individual attention, and the celebrity status of the instructor. In other words, they're all over the place. That said, there are general rules of thumb. In Europe, it's rare to find a full-day program for less than $200, and that price can soar in locations like Provence or Tuscany, where a five-hour, five-course meal instructional often tops $350. In the U.S., a short group class (two hours or so, with 12 or more students) costs around $50. At the other end of the spectrum, one-on-one tutorials can climb to $600 a day. In Asia, travelers will find an equally large disparity. An introductory cooking class at the Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi in Chiang Mai is $154 a day, but a similar lesson covering the same curriculum at the Thai Cookery School, 10 minutes away, runs only $31 (thaicookeryschool.com). Are there ever any deals? The short answer is no. Unlike flights or hotels, prices at cooking schools remain pretty constant. That said, one piece of advice still applies for bargain hunters: Buy in bulk. Chef and author Samira Hradsky, who teaches out of her Paris apartment, lowers the price from $250 to $200 a day if you sign up for more than one course (foodunitestheworld.com). Is there anything I should do before showing up? Sure. Consider it your prep work: Read about dishes and ingredients you're likely to encounter, and try out a recipe or two at home. Whether it turns out delicious or dreadful, you'll almost certainly arrive in class primed with questions. When you're there, remember to take notes (it's not the same as reading handouts later). And bring a digital camera too; the visuals will be helpful when you try to re-create the recipe on your own. Finally, consider booking a room with a kitchenette so you can practice what you learn while the lessons are still fresh—and while you have access to all those fantastic local ingredients. EXTRA CREDIT! Key phrases to sweet-talk your instructor. Italy "La ricetta è della sua nonna?" Is this your grandmother's recipe? Thailand "Sai prik ig noy, dii mai?" Perhaps a few more chiles? France "Pourriez-vous me conseiller un bon vin?" Can you recommend a good wine? U.S. "You should be on Top Chef." DRESS CODE DON'TS Four items not to wear on your first day at school. Dangling jewelry: Cuisinarts can be cruel. A sweater: Wouldn't you rather bake the ingredients? Flip-flops: One dropped rolling pin... Chef hat: Don't even think about it.

It was quiet when I stepped into the Farmers Diner in Quechee, Vt. At eight in the morning, the vintage dining car smelled of syrup and grease, just like it should. I slid up to the worn marble counter and planted myself on a red-vinyl stool. The waitress nodded at me, as if to say, "I'll get there when I get there." By the look of it, the Farmers was just like any other New England diner. At least until I picked up the menu. It wasn't that I didn't recognize the food; there were classics like omelets and club sandwiches. It was the ingredients that caught me off guard. Eggs from a farm down the road. Bacon smoked over ground corncob and maple shavings from just north of town. Leave it to Vermonters to turn a blue-plate special green. Across the state, Yankee practicality is blending with back-to-the-land values in the form of diners that promote local foods. On any given day, three quarters of the ingredients at the Farmers come from within a 70-mile radius. Statewide, at least half a dozen other diners are following a similar path. The Farmers Dinerwas my first stop on a four-point greasy-spoon tour of southern and central Vermont (5573 Woodstock Rd. Rte. 4, entrées from $5). From there, I headed south down Route 5, a two-lane road that parallels busy Interstate 91 and hugs the Connecticut River. Rather than speed down the highway, I chose to take my time, cutting through farmland and passing from one former mill town to the next: Windsor and Bellows Falls (both a little down on their heels), and finally, Brattleboro, a small riverfront city resurrected in recent years by artists and entrepreneurs, as evidenced by the new galleries, brewpubs, and meditation centers set up in old brick storefronts. In many ways, mill towns like these are the reason that diners exist. In the late 1800s, mobile lunch wagons would park outside mills and factories to feed workers on the late shift. They were bawdy places filled with factory men, and in an effort to draw more customers, proprietors began sprucing them up. The wheels came off. The names were feminized to make them more approachable. (Ever notice how many diner names begin with "Miss"?) And the diner as we now know it began to take shape, driven by a handful of manufacturers, such as Worcester in Massachusetts and Silk City in New Jersey, that modeled their wagons after railroad dining cars. Just outside Brattleboro, I pulled up to a picture-perfect example: The Chelsea Royal Diner, a 1938 Worcester lunch car (487 Marlboro Rd. Rte. 9, West Brattleboro, chelsearoyaldiner.com, entrées from $6). Inside, I grabbed a booth beneath the classic barreled ceiling. Like the Farmers, the Chelsea Royal showcases local food: A garden out back supplies fresh greens and tomatoes; omelets are made with eggs from a henhouse on the property. I asked Kristy, a waitress in milkmaid braids, what was good that day, and she told me the peach cobbler had just come out of the oven. "The peaches traveled down from Dutton's this afternoon," she said, referring to a farm stand I had passed earlier. It's tempting to think of Vermont's local-foods movement as just that, a movement. But, really, it's a continuation. Farming (and eating) has always been locally oriented here. Green diners might seem like by-products of our Michael Pollan–inspired times, but they're at least an equal part old-fashioned Yankee practicality. This point was driven home to me at theBlue Benn Dinerin Bennington (318 North St. Rte. 7, 802/442-5140, entrées from $2). I had left Brattleboro that morning and made my way across southern Vermont on Route 9, weaving through pine forests, past the overlook at Hogback Mountain, and through Wilmington, a whitewashed town with flower baskets hanging from the bridges. The Blue Benn, a 1949 Silk City chrome dining car, has been packing in crowds for decades. I settled onto a stool in front of a mini jukebox at the counter. Dozens of signs tacked to the wall touted an eclectic mix of specials—everything from nut burgers to pumpkin-pecan pancakes. I ordered the veggie enchiladas, filled with zucchini, onions, and tomatoes, and topped with Vermont cheddar. The vegetables, the waitress told me, come from owner Sonny Monroe's garden, and the menu changes based on the morning's yield. "When it's cleaning-out-the-garden time, it's gazpacho time," she said. Does it get more Yankee than that? Like Brattleboro, the town of Bennington has witnessed a small rebirth in recent years. I spent the rest of my afternoon poking around pottery and antiques stores and cooling my heels at The Eddington House Inn, an elegant and uncluttered 1857 gray-clapboard B&B (21 Main St., eddingtonhouseinn.com, from $109). The next morning, I woke up to stuffed French toast and a yogurt parfait topped with raspberries, and then set out on Route 7A, heading north through Green Mountain National Forest. At Manchester, I dodged the traffic aimed for the dozens of designer outlets nearby (even in Vermont, you can't wear Birkenstocks all the time) and veered northwest to the off-the-beaten-track town of Castleton. Fifteen miles west of Rutland, Castleton (population 4,000) is not the kind of place you'd visit—unless you're on a diner tour. But I could see immediately that the Birdseye Dinerwas worth the detour (590 Main St., birdseyediner.com, entrées from $11). The gleaming 1940s Silk City car sits on Main Street, just across from the clapboard Castleton Village Store. Inside, a group of Castleton State College kids were eating blueberry pancakes under an art deco clock. I ordered the meatloaf and mashed potatoes and paired it with a summer ale from Otter Creek, a brewery in nearby Middlebury. I asked the waitress if the diner's owner bought ingredients from area farms. "Well, yeah, the eggs and lettuce are local," she said. "But the milk? Um, no, that's from Rutland." I guess in Vermont, 15 miles may as well be 1,500.

BAG Reisenthel's insulated aluminum-and-polyester tote hauls farmers market finds or picnic fixings with equal ease, and it even works as a durable carry-on. touchofeurope.net, $40. SANDWICH GUARD You may get manhandled going through airport security, but thanks to this BPA-free plastic case, your homemade PB&J won't. bananaguard.com, $7. WINE CARRIER Made from the same neoprene as a wet suit, Built NY's wine carrier cushions souvenir bottles of Sancerre and keeps contents chilled for up to four hours. builtny.com, $16. WATER BOTTLE This sunny, Karim Rashid–designed bottle comes with a built-in carbon filter to make potable tap water cleaner and fresher-tasting. waterbobble.com, $10. SNACK POUCH While we love Ziplocs, disposable baggies aren't exactly ecofriendly. Abeego Snack's beeswax-coated hemp cone is easily rinsed out, so today's strawberries won't taint tomorrow's trail mix. betterbabybums.com, $13. PLACE MAT Trust us: You want a protective layer between your food and that seat-back tray table. This plastic-lined foldable place mat, in cheeky red and white checks, does just that—and doubles as a Velcro-sealed sandwich wrapper. wrap-n-mat.com, $9.

Adam Richman eats food for a living. Lots of it. As the intrepid host of the Travel Channel's Man v. Food, Richman takes on feats of consumption—the country's hottest curry, a 72-ounce steak, a 10-pound super-stuffed pizza—in cities around the nation. It's both an exercise in indulgence and a showcase for the foods that separate Charleston, S.C., from Columbus, Ohio, and Austin from Atlanta. But Richman isn't just into volume: For the past decade, the 36-year-old New Yorker has cultivated strategies and techniques for nosing out authentic fare anywhere he goes. You've just landed in an unfamiliar city. How do you zero in on the best food? First, I'll do some recon before I leave. I'll send out an open question on Twitter and then check out Yelp, because I feel like you're getting "the people's" opinion that way. Once I get there, I avoid advice from concierges and cabbies, because they may have an ulterior motive to send you someplace. Instead, I go to the service-industry workers: the bellhops, the cleaning ladies, the guys who work in the parking garage. So what's the last great recommendation you got from a bellhop? I was in Baltimore for the show, and we were planning to eat crab at Obrycki's, a place everyone knows. I got into a conversation at my hotel with two bellmen and a housekeeper, and they told me about G&M, out in a suburb called Linthicum Heights. The crab cakes were a revelation; they had a texture similar to quiche (gandmcrabcakes.com, from $17). The waitresses were chill and friendly—not like at a tourist trap, where they just want to turn tables. It was Baltimore at its most real. What's the most interesting food city in America? It's a three-way tie. Austin, because it's a center of Tejano culture and Tex-Mex cuisine, as well as an amazing barbecue town. Portland, Ore., because of the fresh produce and seafood, the Saturday Market, which is the best food market in the country, and Voodoo Doughnut, where you can get a Bacon Maple Bar (a maple-syrup-glazed doughnut topped with bacon). And last, Charleston, S.C., because of the Gullah Low Country cuisine, which weaves seafood into classic Southern food better than anywhere else. All travelers overeat once in a while—and pay for it later. How do you handle "the burn?" Zantac. I'm one with the mighty Z. "My Last Meal" I would start with a couple of stone crab claws from Joe's Stone Crab Restaurant in Miami Beach, Fla. (joesstonecrab.com); then some slow-roasted pork from Brasa in Minneapolis (brasa.us); and one link of Bahama Mama sausage from Schmidt's in Columbus, Ohio (schmidthaus.com). Man, this is tough...then some king crab from Alaska, like from Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse in Anchorage (humpys.com); the guacamole from Austin's Juan In A Million (juaninamillion.com); half of an Al's Italian beef sandwich in Chicago (alsbeef.com); and a taco from Lucha Libre in San Diego (tacosmackdown.com). Look, if it's my last meal, trust me, I will put all my eating challenges to shame. I'll eat for a week. Man v. Food airs on the Travel Channel Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Follow Richman at twitter.com/adamrichman.