In Reply to: Cooking Ubud posted by wabaligirls on Friday, 26. January 2007 at 15:22 Bali Time:
I recently did the cooking school at Warung Enak and it was excellent. I've also done the cooking class at Casa Luna and throughly enjoyed it, but I found the class at Warung Enak in another league. For a start the classes are limited to six people. On my class it was just my Mother and I. The head chef picked us up in the morning and we went to the markets for a little walk around and to purchase a few bits and pieces. Chef Rai bought a few fruits that we hadn't seen or tried before and these were sliced up for us to try whilst we were cooking.
We worked in the restaurant kitchen - with all the days prep work going on around us it was exciting. We helped to make lots of dishes, tried heaps as we went along and then at the end we were supposed to sit down to a big lunch with the chef and eat all the dishes we had prepared. I say "supposed to" as my Mum wasn't feeling crash hot so instead they packaged up the food for us and my Mum went back to our villa to sleep in the air conditioning whilst I sat on the balcony and feasted! The staff were lovely and attentive - giving us drinks and boiling up a few bananas for my Mum to eat to try and get rid of the dreaded BB.
The class is more expensive here, but you pay for the small class size, the personalized attention, the quality of the dishes prepared and for the experience to work in a "real-life" kitchen ( a dream come true for a foodie like me!). The other thing to note is that you get to make food from around Indonesia, and not just Balinese specialties.
Comparing Casa Luna and Warung Enak cooking classes, I wouldn't say either was better than the other. They're both totally different and I'd happily do either. More info about Warung Enak's class is on their website.