Learn Culinary Secrets at Luxury Hotels

If you love to cook, why not combine a vacation with a culinary arts class at your hotel? Here’s a look at some current offerings:

• At Castello del Nero Hotel & Spa in Florence, Italy, you can learn all about pasta from executive chef Giovanni Luca Di Pirro or his assistant. Classes are for two to six people and include instruction in making ravioli filled with ricotta cheese, spinach, and tomato sauce as well as tagliatelle with chianina beef ragout tiramisu. You can sample these dishes in the lunch that follows the instruction.

• Mexican TV personality Yolanda Yanar provides a live cooking show at Velas Vallarta in Puerto Vallarta. You can learn to prepare recipes from all regions of the country and join the chef on stage as he creates three dishes.

• The InterContinental Hong Kong offers Cooking with the Culinary Stars, taught by chefs from the hotel chain’s restaurants, including Spoon by Alain Ducasse, Yan Toh Heen, and Nobu. Spoon pastry chefs Olivier Lannes and Cyril Dupuis conduct the Baking Club.

• Biltmore Culinary Academy, at the Biltmore Miami Coral Gables, welcomes both adults and children. Classes feature a meal created by participants.

• At the Furama Villas & Spa Ubud, Bali, you can join executive chef Wayan Sugata at sunrise for a trip to the local market. Then, back at the villas, you’ll learn how he creates each dish from fresh food.

• An 18th-century mansion at Belmond Casa de Sierra Nevada in San Miguel de Allende Guanajuato offers an atmospheric setting for the Sazón Culinary Experience. Here the chef and his team will teach you to prepare regional Mexican dishes.

• In the San Francisco area, Sausalito’s Cavallo Point houses a 1,200-square-foot cooking school with an ever-changing schedule of hands-on and demonstration classes that feature food from local organic farms.