A cooking class in your villa near Florence, not in a school kitchen
from€100 per person
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Why the hills around Florence work well for this
Florence, Fiesole, Bagno a Ripoli, Impruneta, San Casciano, Greve and the Chianti Fiorentino are regularly reachable from the Siena base within the included service area, subject to the exact route. Villa kitchens vary considerably, so Roberto confirms the hob, oven, refrigeration and work space before deciding what equipment to bring and how to divide the class into stations.
The kind of house we cook in around here
Three kinds of house come up around Florence, and each is planned differently. The restored hillside villa, often with a terrace or loggia large enough to seat a group outside and a kitchen built for large groups. The converted fattoria or convent, where the kitchen is handsome but the extraction is limited, so the fried and smoky parts of a menu are planned around an open door. And the apartment inside a town palazzo, which is worth telling us about early: a class for eight in a two-hob kitchen is a different plan rather than an impossible one. Which one you have varies by property and is confirmed before booking.
What that means in the kitchen is worth two lines. These houses were rewired when they were restored, so the hob is more often electric or induction than gas, and a class that wants four pans finishing at once is planned around that. The oven is domestic: it takes one tray properly and two badly, which is why the crostata and the brioche never share it. The working surface is usually long enough for four people and not for eight, so we bring boards. None of it is a problem once it is known, and it is known from the photographs of the kitchen you send us before we confirm.
What the land around Florence gives us
The menu does not change from one area to the next. What changes is the local produce. Working north of Siena puts us beside the Chianti Fiorentino and the Impruneta hills, the country for the pork and the beef behind the long meat sauces that go with pappardelle. Impruneta is traditionally known for its kilns, the ones that fired the tiles for the cathedral dome. The bread is the unsalted Tuscan loaf, alongside schiacciata. In summer we choose whatever is ripest and freshest that morning, which shows in a sauce built on four ingredients. Anything named here is confirmed through the actual shopping rather than promised in advance.
We do not publish a supplier list, because a list published is a list somebody has to keep true. What is worth naming is what is there anyway. The Mercato Centrale at San Lorenzo is a hall of iron and glass finished in 1874, still divided into aisles of butchers, bakers and fishmongers, and Macelleria Soderi has held a counter inside it for generations of the same family: it is where you go to be told which cut is behind a bistecca before you buy one. For bread, Pugi has been making schiacciata since 1925. Good addresses, worth a visit of your own.
What people wrote after cooking with us
These come from the Google listing. It does not record which house a review was written in, so we do not sort them by area and we do not claim they were left here.
★★★★★Marshall Hoke · September 2026 · on Google
Roberto and Elario taught my friends and I how to make homemade spinach raviolis and pici and cantucci toscani in authentic Tuscan style. They were super fun and friendly and left our kitchen looking spotless after a three course meal. 100% would recommend Roberto Chef for a delicious cooking experience!!!
★★★★★Angela Bereski · September 2026 · on Google
Roberto and Ilario were exceptional! It was a very fun evening of making pasta and dessert. Roberto is a great teacher and Ilario was a wonderful addition to the experience as he helped throughout every stage. The food was amazing and the experience was one to remember. We also walked away with new recipes to make at home. Highly recommend them for a cooking class in Tuscany!
★★★★★Melina Davis · September 2025 · on Google
We had such a wonderful evening learning from Chef Roberto and tasting his food (and ours) following the class. He came to our rented villa in Chianti and spent 5 hours with us teaching, laughing and savoring the incredible pastas and almond cantucci we asked to learn about! I think we all feel so much more confident about trying this at home and had such a fun time together! I can’t recommend Chef Roberto highly enough!
The questions we get about Florence
Do you come to apartments inside Florence itself?
Where do you park at a villa on the hills?
Is there a surcharge for coming to Florence from Siena?
What a class costs near Florence
The same as anywhere else we cook: travel is included within 1.5 hours of Siena and calculated from the exact address under the published travel rule. Prices are per person, and everything is included: Roberto buys and brings all the ingredients for the lesson, and leaves the kitchen clean when he goes.
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Dolci di Casa | from€100 per person |
Book a class near Florence
Prefer a dinner? Private chef near Florence, Italy
