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New Orleans School of Cooking
Rating Details »
17 reviews for New Orleans School of Cooking
This class was a great experience. The chef demonstrated how to cook the native New Orleans cuisine and provided us with our own copies of the recipes to follow along.
The biscuits that they gave as a snack were amazing. They also let us have more than one helping of all of the food.
I would recommend buying the fresh pralines for all of your friends at the attached store because they are much cheaper than the prepackaged pralines you find in all of the tourist shops.
My only complaint is that they used basically the same meats for the gumbo and jimbalaya. I would have liked one of the dishes to have had some seafood.
What a delightful way to spend 3 hours. For $27 you attend a 2 hour cooking demonstration, then eat the results for lunch. Our instructor was very entertaining and clearly a great cook.
She made, and gave us the written recipes for: gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding with hard sauce and pralines. And were they ever delicious!
Specifically, the gumbo and pralines were the best I've ever had.
Highly recommended.
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I was looking to keep myself busy while my husband was at a conference. A cooking class sounded fun so I ended up at the NOLA School of cooking. Our cook for the day was Miss Barbara a native of Louisiana. The menu was a cajun feast: chicken & andouille sausage gumbo, chicken & smoked sausage jambalaya, pina colada bread pudding with a whiskey sauce and pralines.
I left with a packet of recipes to try at home, a full stomach and a cold Abita beer. What a wonderful find.
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I agree that this is the best money you can spend in New Orleans and NOLA is inexpensive now anyway. The classes are superb (I went two days) and they include a great lunch, all for $27! You can't get much of anything in Miami (or NYC) for that, much less a great value ...
The classes are very informative and detailed (pay attention and you can cook it, check the schedule so you know what) also include a bit of the fascinating culinary history of NOLA, more or less detailed depending on the instructor. The people at the School are all lovely friendly, as is NOLA generally, and the School sells all of the ingredients that you might not be able to find elsewhere. There were people from all around the States (and world) in attendance and everyone seemed very pleased with the classes. (A Couple of New Zealanders at the table had never had cornbread!). I had the best gumbo I've ever tasted there (and I ate it six times in three days in NOLA.)
It was just a lovely experience, I could not more highly recommend it, and you can round it off with a trip to the interesting Southern Food Museum.
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My friend and I went here during the week as we thought it would be a fun way to spend a few hours....and it was. We've taken demo cooking classes before so we sort of knew what to expect. I'd say we got our money's worth and then some.
Our class was taught by the woman (her name escapes me). We could have listened to her talk all afternoon. She was very thorough in her demo and provided us with some great NOLA hisotry on the cuisine and area....a nice added bonus for the class.
The classroom is set up in rounds so you will be sharing a table with about 6 other people. The class was packed and found it was a good mix of locals and out of towners...we had a couple people from IL sitting at our table even. The table also has your own array of sauces & spices for you to try and buy later if you wish.
24 bucks gets you the demo, in our case a lil history lesson, free beverages (root beer, beer, tea & water) and a 3 course meal. In our particular class we made prailines (yummm), gumbo (so so good) and jambalaya (again delicious). The portions are not skimy either and there was even enough to get seconds if you wanted.
I believe you get a discount on anything used in the demo...of course you get the recipes to take hom and if you decide to make any of the dishes demo'd in the class and send in a photo...you'll get a certificate...too cute! I loved this class and would consider taking it again. It's such a great deal and you get a demo class and lunch all in one shot!
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I was really bummed that we found this place on the last day. I would of loved to of have taken a cooking class here. But bought lots of spices and some praline's I must say that they have the best. I love white chocolate and they make white chocolate and other types or praline's there,,,ummmm delicious.
This is the best money you will spend in New Orleans if you like to cook. You sit there, learn some great recipes, hear history lessons about New Orleans, drink beer and then - best part - eat! I had so much fun!
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The cooking class at the New Orleans School of Cooking was something of a last minute choice. We had a flight back to CA at 3pm on Saturday and on Friday evening we called and reserved two spots for the 10am class the next day. So simple.
We strolled over to the school, just a couple blocks of Bourbon St., and made our way into a small room of tables with a kitchen/stage in the front.
For the next two and a half hours, we got cooking instructions for gumbo, jambalaya, pralines, and bread pudding. What I liked best was the history of the food and local culture. How the spices typical of New Orleans cooking found their way there over years of immigration. Really cool.
And the food was super tasty. With the exception of the pralines, we were welcome to have seconds. Nice! Complimentary beers and sodas topped it off perfectly. Might have been the best 27 bucks I spent during my trip.
After the class, we all headed out into the gift shop/lobby and although I didn't buy anything, I saw that there were plenty of great gifts for cooks/ foodies. Lots of spice kits and utensils as well as the tourist standards of beignet mix and chickory coffee.
I'd definitely recommend a visit if you're a foodie and/or a history geek.
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This review is based solely on the store, and not the actual school.
This is just a great place to find culinary-related gifts or souvenirs that you might not see in the souvenir shops. Whenever I'm out of town, I like to bring home local food, treats, or just grocery type items, and this place has them all. Great pralines, tons of spices, seasoning and sauces, cookware, and some local spirits as well. This goes a few steps beyond the run of the mill souvenir shops that line the main drag, particularly if you're looking for foodstuffs.
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I've taken the class at New Orleans School of cooking several times with Kevin and it's been a great experience. He's a really good instructor, obviously passionate about the food he's teaching you about, and the recipes you learn are pretty good with some Abita beer to boot. They do need to add a couple new menus though, as I have pretty much gone through all of them.
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Go here. It's different than anything else you'll do while in NOLA and very educational. And as a super-duper added bonus, the food is damn good. And as a cherry on top, you get beers with your meal!
I went on a Sunday, which was a gumbo/jumbalaya/bread pudding/praline menu. As promised by our entertaining and knowledgeable instructor Michael, it was one of the best meals we had while there. I finally got a glimpse of what gumbo was supposed to taste like after being severely underwhelmed at K-Paul's the night before.
Great for both small and large groups, adults, children, teens, foodies, non-foodies, and even vegetarians (he'll make you a salad). You'll learn about the history of the city via the history of the cuisine in a fun, casual, air-conditioned environment. What more could you ask for for $27?
And lest you think that all the Yelpers giving it 5 stars are friends of the place, check out other review sites (blasephemous, I know, but Yelp has yet to reach critical mass in NOLA). It is the #1 attraction based a ton of TripAdvisor reviews in the city with everyone raving about it just as they have here.
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I thought the people at New Orleans School of Cooking were very friendly and fun to be around. We went to the class for Red Beans & Rice, Corn Bread and Pralines. Tom was entertaining as he prepared the food and gave us a lot of information about the history of the area while he cooked. It was obvious that he loved the area and really went into detail with interesting facts which we enjoyed.
The one thing that bothered me was the recipes that they gave us weren't followed at all. I am a cook that likes to measure everything precisely the first time I cook. There were a lot of substitutions like lard instead of oil and several ingredients were substituted or added and it wouldn't take that long to revise their recipes to include the information with all the variations. I have never seen so much sugar go into cornbread before - I think most cakes have less sugar. It was a fun afternoon and I wish I took more time to shop in the store before leaving.
A must do in the French Quarter. We walked into the general store and chatted with the owner and instructor who gave us a sense on how Katrina has effected business.
We showed up the next day for the class, look for coupons, and had a fabulous time watching the cooking while enjoying biscuits, sugar syrup, cinnamon topping, crab bisque, shrimp creole and pralines. Worth way more than the price. Entertaining, educational and emotional as we learned the life stories of NOLA and the people.
Plenty of iced tea, root beer and local beer.
A reat experience that you won't soon forget.
The pralines from here are the very best in the French Quarter. We came home three days ago with two boxes of a dozen each. We now have three pralines left. We went to many different places to find the praline we liked the most and these are the best. I usually lean more toward the chewy type of candy rather than the sugary type. These happen to be more sugary but the flavor is so flavorful that they are simply delicious. I am sitting here right now eating one. They are on the small side but are reasonably priced, about $7.00 for a boxed dozen. At another place I paid almost $14.00 for eight. So many of the other places made pralines that look good but the sugar part tastes only of sugar. These go way beyond just being sweet. Wish I could give you a little taste but shucks, now I am sadly down to just two.
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After a day of shopping in the French Quarter, I realized that I wasn't going to find a huge difference from one shop to the next, so I would have to find something else to do. Fortunately, I stumbled upon the New Orleans School of Cooking. I had shopped here on previous trips, but never took any of the classes.
For $27, I got to watch a chef prepare a four course meal (gumbo, jambalaya, bread pudding, and pralines) while he gave an in-depth history of New Orleans, explained the difference between creole and Cajun, and described the immigrant influences on the rich food of New Orleans. We not only got to eat the food he prepared, but we were also served a local beer, Abita, and got copies of the recipes.
If you love to cook and love history, you'll love this class. It's worth way more than $27. And since tourism hasn't completely rebounded, the class size was fairly small so you didn't feel like you disappeared in a sea of other tourists.
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because i'm the nicest daughter in the world, i took hulamom to louisiana (her favorite state (next to the land of hula, of course)) for her 50th birthday. we spent a lot of time in new orleans and the best two days we spent together were in big kevin's class at the new orleans school of cooking. he was awesome: hilarious, clearly talented behind the stove, unafraid of spice and holy mother of god can he cook. it's been a few years since we went and all of his recipes are still in heavy rotation in both our homes.
absolutely not to be missed:
the pralines will make you want to cry so buy as many boxes as you can cram into your suitcase
go ahead and buy the biggest vat of joe's stuff you can find cuz that shit is indispensable
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I have never been to a class, but I give them 5 stars because they have the best pralines! When you enter the business you enter their general store and in the corner they make their pralines. I love them because they're usually made fresh and warm, I love them because they're small and I feel less guilty about eating so many, I love them because they use the freshest ingredients. I miss New Orleans!
