Kitchen Confidential: Our Guide to Cooking Classes in Town

Be it homemade breads, desserts (think cakes, ice cream and chocolate), Indian dishes, Continental or even Mexican cuisine, Manju’s Cooking Class covers it all. Apart from accurate recipes and detailed demos, you can also expect lots of useful tips and tricks.

Popular among expats and cooking enthusiasts in the city, Marina Charles’s culinary classes include sessions for baking, and vegetarian and non-vegetarian Indian food. Marina believes in starting off with basics such as teaching you how to make garam masala. Oh, and she also provides one-on-one sessions on weekdays.

While this cooking studio hosts regular culinary events for corporates, friends and families, we suggest you keep a lookout for their short-term (mostly one-day) cooking classes (on anything from Lebanese to Italian cuisine) which happen every now and then. All you need to do is call them up, tell them what classes you’re looking for and they promise to contact you when there’s one coming up.

Looking for a fun cooking session in town? Turn to Slurp Studio without a second thought. Steaks and chops, kababs and biriyani, Tex Mex, Cantonese and even Mughlai cuisine are just some of the classes this studio has put together in the recent past. And, we sure are looking forward to the next one!

While Whitefield Baking Company’s culinary classes may not be regular. they are nevertheless worth looking forward to. Their recent session on preparing mince pies was a fitting way to welcome the season of joy, we think.

Baking enthusiasts can choose from a six-week course or an elaborate, rigorous 480-hours diploma programme at Lavonne. They also offer quite a few weekend courses, right from basic breads to modern French pastries.

Too busy to go for classes and want something which will let you become a pro at cooking without leaving the comfort of your home? Archana’s Kitchen might just be what you need. Started by Archana Doshi in 2007, the blog has enough recipes {all vegetarian, we must add} to keep you scrolling for a while. Its Youtube channel has over 190 demo videos and is categorised into sections like Breakfast Recipes, Soup Recipes, Cooking Techniques & Methods, and more, making it easy for you to decide what you’d like to learn for the day.

Bridget conducts classes for small groups (one-on-one sessions can also be arranged) at her residence or even at yours where she teaches her speciality: Colonial-style Anglo Indian cuisine. This includes both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes such as curries, side and rice dishes, sweet treats meant for Christmas and other festivals, tea time snacks and savouries and baked dishes. Expect to learn dishes such as Railway Mutton Curry, Dak Bungalow Chicken, Mulligatawny Soup, Mint Coriander Mutton Chops, Vegetable Jalfrezie and Kedgeree with boiled eggs. Apart from cooking demos, Bridget also delves deep into the history and evolution of Anglo Indian cuisine and how a dish got its monicker.

Vegetarians, fret not! Enroll at Anjali Cooking School's, all-vegetarian cooking classes that are conducted at home. With hands-on training learn to whip up Rajasthani Specials, chaats and snacks, cookies, pasta, eggless-cakes and more! You also get recipe sheets to refer to while you cook and take back home. Look up their websites to sign up for upcoming courses. 

This international school offers courses to please a casual cooking/ baking hobby through their part-time classes or full-time classes if you're looking to go the professional route. As part of their interactive classes, you can learn pastry or international cuisines by chefs of international repute. If you opt for the full-time diploma courses, you can easily qualify to work at a 5-star or set up a business of your own.