Cooking Schools in Rio de Janeiro

If you’ve ever been to a Brazilian-style churrascaria state-side, you’ve probably noticed: People from Brazil are fans of a good feast. After sampling classic Brazilian foods like pão de queijo (cheese bread) and acarajé (shrimp stuffed bean fritters) on your trip, you'll be be craving them long after your return. Good news: if you take the time to sprinkle in some culinary courses while in Rio, you'll experience a full immersion into the local Carioca flavor and learn how to cook and eat like the locals. Here, some of the best cooking classes in the neighborhood.

As Marias Culinária. Av. N. S. de Copacabana, 1229, Suite #202, Copacabana, +55 (21) 2287-6587.

The humble roots of As Marias Culinária can be traced back to 1972, when Maria Emilia opened a little hotel in Rio de Janeiro’s Finnish colony, Penedo. By 1980, what began as a small salgadinho (salty finger foods) fabrication evolved into family-operated cooking schools in Rio, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte, and Brasília. Since 2007, Maria Tereza Martins and Maria da Conceição Oliveira have been at the helm, offering a variety of three-hour courses starting from approximately $125. Tourists can enjoy single intensive sessions that focus on easy-to-prepare items like tortes and sauces or multi-day courses that include training manuals with more than 200 recipes.

Cook in Rio. Rua Raimundo Correa, 68, Suite #105, Copacabana, +55 (21) 8761-3653.

Restaurateur Simone de Almeida teaches two four-hour cooking classes at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays in her Portuguese tapas bar restaurant, Tasco Do Lido. You’ll start off by muddling a classic caipirinha, then move on to fried yucca and a seafood coconut stew called moqueca. If you prefer pork to seafood, you can substitute a traditional black bean stew, or feijoada, for the main dish. Almeida provides a brief history of the dishes and answers questions from the group during preparation. At the end, you’ll get to dig in and enjoy the fruits of your labor with a cachaça and coconut cocktail called a batida de coco. You can make a 10 percent deposit on the $75 class at the Cook in Rio website to reserve your space, with the remainder payable in cash on class day.

Espaço Carioca de Gastronomia. Rua Tereza Guimarães, 26, Botafogo, +55 (21) 3598-1218.

Harold Lethiais, a French chef from the Normandie region is the owner and instructor at Espaço Carioca de Gastronomia, where cooking, pastry, and tasting courses are offered for locals and tourists from approximately $45 to $60. Rio-born author and chef Leticia Moreinos Schwartz says the school is comparable to culinary schools you might find in the U.S., with granite countertops and ample top-of-the-line equipment and kitchen gadgets. The varied offerings include everything from haute cuisine to small chefs (kids) cooking classes. You can find the latest offering via an online calendar on the school’s website.

Uma Chef em Casa. Rua Visconde de Pirajá, 303, Suite #307, Ipanema, +55 (21) 3201-2044.

Courses at Uma Chef em Casa are led by nutritionist Andrea Lacerda and chef Helen Puterman, who graduated from Rio’s Universidade Estácio de Sáe and were trained at the Alain Ducasse school in France. Although most of the school’s cooking courses are geared toward locals, homemakers, kids, and aspiring chefs, the team saw an opportunity in offering classes for foreigners, too. Class menus vary but when entertaining her Gringo guests, Puterman said she likes to focus on traditional dishes that can be recreated anywhere in the world with commonly-found ingredients. The cost of the two-hour courses start at approximately $110.