Gourmet's Guide to the World's Best Cooking Schools: Food + Cooking : gourmet.com

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We’ve traveled across the globe and come back with great tips, fabulous recipes, and a collection of truly amazing places to visit.

What brings the act of cooking to life? For some, it means stepping into a world within a world. Each experience, whether sumptuous (a French château) or simple (a palm-fringed Indian island), should have a certain glamour about it, a certain sense of style.

France: Two Bordelais
India: Philipkutty’s Farm
New York: Jean George’s Culinary Master Course
Morocco: Peggy Markel
Italy: Academia Barilla

Photograph Courtesy of Two Bordelais

There is a bone-deep pleasure that comes with discovering the unexpected. When you travel across time as well as land, you find magic in ordinary kitchen tools and techniques that have remained unchanged for centuries. It frees the imagination.

Laos: Tamarind
Republic of Georgia: The Route of Flavors
Malaysia: Lazat Malaysian Home Cooking Classes; Ismail Ahmad
India: Tellicherry Pepper

Photograph by Emily Nathan

Even committed liberal arts majors can appreciate delving into a single topic in detail—the mysteries of artisanal bread-baking, unfamiliar fish species, chile varieties, dim sum crafting, or pan-Asian cuisine. After all, focus brings out the best in every student.

Australia: The Unlimited Cuisine Company
Hong Kong: Martha Sherpa
England: Padstow Seafood School
Mexico: Culinary Adventures
England: Richard Bertinet

Photograph by Peter Mack

Interspersing kitchen sessions with hikes up a mountain, deep-tissue massages, and yoga sessions at dawn isn’t a bad way to pass your days. And when the skills you’ve picked up translate into a more wholesome diet and routine back home—so much the better.

Mexico: La Cocina que Canta
Santa Fe: The Conscious Gourmet Culinary Retreat
California: Wellness Kitchen

Photograph by Andrea Gomez

There’s a reason language students go to live in the homes of native speakers. When you’re swimming in an ocean of information, you absorb it more thoroughly. It may be scary at first, but you’ll soon be talking—and cooking—as if you’ve been there forever.

New York: The Culinary Institute of America
Hong Kong: Chopsticks Cooking Centre
Thailand: Thai Cookery School
Canada: Fairburn Farm