This isn’t my first time being at this fun culinary school called CulinaryOn at Raffles Place but it is always fun to be back here again. Besides, it seems that their culinary classes have gotten even better this time.
How did I ended up here again?
I was here with my friend, Noriko who invited me to join her for this Virgin Active New Members’ Night at CulinaryOn. It was an evening of fun where we get to eat and cook our meals at the same time. That event was also an opportunity for the gym members to get to know one another.
And as her plus one, I did not know what to expect. But what I do know is that I was with a bunch of crazy people.
Some food and wine before cooking
Before the cooking session, we get to enjoy some light snacks and bites like Nachos, mini tarts, mini burgers and Vietnamese Spring rolls. Food was really good and innovative. I remembered having this Chili Crab toast which tasted awesome.
Even as we are cooking, we can still make our way to the mini buffet spread to get some food and drinks. However, if you would like to have a glass of wine, you will need to pay for that.
What’s on the menu?
Chef Cindy Low was in the house that evening! We cooked Shrimp and Riccola pasta and Chocolate Lave Cake with Italian Gelato. The food turned out to be great.
How is the class structured?
I think there were a total of about 60 or more people who attended the event that evening. They split us into two large groups where each group will occupy a cooking studio each. And if I’m not wrong, there are a total of 3 cooking studios at CulinaryOn.
It’s somewhat quite packed for a class to have 20 to 30 over people in one studio but somehow CulinaryOn’s passionate team of instructors made everyone feel comfortable. In other words, it was packed but cosy.
Unlike other cooking classes I’ve been to, we do not get to cook our own portions and taste them. Instead, we worked in teams to prepare and cook our dishes. Most of the cooking preparations were done by us (e.g the cutting and making of pasta) while the cooking process was actually done by their instructors and their cooking assistants. Thus, not everyone might be involved in cooking all the dishes from scratch.
However, each of us will somehow get involved in some of the main activities or games they organised in between. Thus, it is actually a fun and entertaining cooking class. It is not your usual run-of-the-mill kind of culinary school where you pick up solid culinary skills. Over at
How on earth did they do it?
The Cooking Instructor’s Magic
If you scroll and read through the positive reviews of
We had Chef Cindy who taught us how to dance as we cook. Her positive energy has rubbed off on some of the participants and before you know it, everyone in the class was dancing to the beat of the music. Yes, music. How can I forget about that? Music plays a great part in creating that fun and relaxing ambience in the studio. They blast the latest hits and tunes which everyone could sing to and dance along.
Making Chocolate Lava Cake
Our first group task was to mix all the ingredients together to make the chocolate lava cake batter. Chef Cindy would demonstrate the steps before we moved back to our tables to prepare our cake batter.
Once we are done with that, we scooped the batter into cake moulds and pop them into the oven to bake. While we are busy working on other activities, the cooking assistants will handle the baking process for us. They are the ones who would make sure that our cakes don’t get burnt.
Although the recipe is simple and easy to make, some steps do require skills. And since every dish is made from scratch and quality ingredients are used, every dish turns out delicious.
Making Pasta from Scratch
I’ve attended cooking classes before and they would usually use ready-made pasta to cook pasta dishes. But over here at
To hype up the pasta-making activity, they made us form a super long piece of pasta dough. After flattening out the dough into this long and thin pasta sheet, they measured every group’s pasta sheet to see which team made the longest record-breaking pasta dough sheet.
Next, we cut the long pasta sheet into small pieces and shred them into thinner pasta noodles.
Likewise, the cooking process was taken over by
With their help, we do not have to go through so much hassle of cooking and washing. In fact, our class last for about 90 minutes. And we ate our dishes at around 8.45pm.
If you have diet restrictions, they will also take care of that. They can cater to Muslim participants as well.
Enjoying our creations!
Pasta with Shrimps and Riccola
Last but not least, we got to enjoy our handcrafted pastas. It was healthy, fresh and delicious.
As for desserts, they showed us how we could make Italian gelato from scratch. To speed things up, they use liquid nitrogen which instantly freezes the gelato mixture. In seconds, we have this icy cold gelato made in an instant right before our eyes.
Chocolate Lava Cake with Italian Gelato
The Chocolate Lava cake was baked to perfection. It was a little too sweet for me but the Vanilla gelato was fantastic.
Overall, it was a truly enjoyable experience. And it was such a positive experience that I was prompted to write and share this post with you guys.
If you have been to CulinaryOn, let me know what your experience is like!
