Food Vacations - 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers - page 83

the restaurant kitchen. (Many are drawn
from Loomis's popular cookbooks such as
The French Farmhouse Cookbook or Cook-
ing at Home .) Students get hands-on prac-
tical experience in the thoroughly
up-to-date teaching kitchen that Loomis
has installed within her historic house.
Students must book their own accommo-
dation in the area.
For guests who don't have time for the
full 6-day course, Loomis also offers a few
3-day programs throughout the year, as
well as gracious multicourse Sunday
lunches, which are entirely doable as a day
trip from Paris. And speaking of Paris, a
few times a year Loomis relocates there,
where she conducts a combination of

week-long and 1-day classes, using the
Left Bank cooking studio of her noted
friend Patricia Wells. If you can't make it all
the way to rue Tatin, Paris isn't a bad
consolation.

1 Rue Tatin, Louviers ( & 866/369-
8073, or 214/306-8734 in the U.S.; www.
onruetatin.com).
( Paris Charles de Gaulle (123km/76
miles).
0 Val de Reuil (1 1 / 2 hr. from Paris).
L $$ Le Pré St. Germain, 7 rue St.
Germain, Louviers ( & 33/2/32-40-48-48;
[e-mail]).

Cooking Schools for Travelers

89

A Week in Provence
The Warmth of the Sun
Condorcet, France

Summers are a glorious time of year to be
in sunny Provence. The air is heavily
scented with wild lavender and thyme,
and endless blue skies arch over olive
groves and stony hillside pastures. Beauti-
ful as this landscape is, it would be a
shame to rush through it on your way to
somewhere else; how much better to set-
tle in for a week and learn the secrets of
robust, earthy Provençal cooking.
The cornerstone foods of Provence—
olives, garlic, bell peppers, lamb, goat,
and fragrant sun-dried herbs like rosemary
and thyme—add up to a quintessentially
rustic cuisine, so it's especially fitting that
this cooking program should be based in
an 18th-century farmhouse nestled in the
hills outside the village of Condorcet. It's a
rural, isolated haven in the mountainous
Haute-Provence region, known for its sun-
drenched days and clear, starry nights;
only 32km (20 miles) away lies Nyons,
regarded as the olive capital of France.

Classes are held in June and September,
and limited to 10 students maximum. Par-
ticipants live right in the farmhouse, eating
most meals together, enjoying a hillside
panorama from the terrace, and swim-
ming in a small stone-rimmed spring-fed
swimming pool.
Each day includes 3 to 5 hours of hands-
on instruction in the cheery teaching
kitchen, taught in English by classically
trained French chef Daniel Bonnot, who
made his name at his New Orleans restau-
rants Chez Daniel and Bizou. With such
small classes, the level of instruction is,
naturally, tailored to the skill levels of the
various people in the class. Optimally, the
class themselves will prepare all the meals
they eat at the farmhouse.
Outside of class, hosts Anne and David
Reinauer also organize daily expeditions
around the area, which may include wine
tastings, market outings, tours of olive oil
factories, or visits to local farms to see