Mama Isa's Cooking School, Venice

This has been the highlight of our trip to Italy. Mama Isa is a historian and a chef and together with her husband they make the perfect team to empower people to learn their family recipes. From the start, Mama Isa gave us detailed instructions on how to get to her place and ensured we were well taken care of from beginning to end. Not only was the food phenomenal, but their hospitality spirit left a deep impression on me. I left feeling so loved and that I wanted to learn so much from them- not only about food but also about how to make a stranger feel so welcome.

My family of four (husband and two children, 13 and 11) spent 3 wonderful and technique-filled hours with Chef Isa and her husband Stefano learning how to make egg tagliatelle with bolognese ragu and homemade focaccia from scratch. We love to cook and have taken many cooking classes, but Chef Isa really stands out with her (1) focus on technique (such as settling our family debate on whether you put EVOO into a cold or hot pan for sauteeing, or giving us individual feedback on how we kneaded the pasta dough); (2) customization and ability to teach us how to make restaurant-quality allergy friendly recipes (very important in our family); (3) very warm teaching style and focus on passing on treasured family traditions. We learned so much and came away with full bellies, delicious and detailed recipes we know we will use again and again, and great memories. Thank you, Isa and Stefano!