Weekend with the Chef · Food and conviviality
Five couples, a house in the Valley of the Temples and an experience built with the chef, from shopping for ingredients to sharing the table.
You do not watch a lesson: you enter the chef’s rhythm, choices and daily work.
Programme and approach
The group takes part in shaping the experience: planning the programme, selecting recipes, organising the shopping and choosing ingredients. Every decision becomes an opportunity to understand seasonality, technique and the identity of Sicilian cuisine.
The chef guides participants through knife skills, cooking methods, textures, timing and kitchen organisation. Everyone works together, with time for questions, trials, corrections and direct discussion of technique.
The Valley of the Temples and Diodoros produce are more than a setting. They enter the recipes, visits, tastings and conversation throughout the weekend.
After the kitchen work, a traditional cantastorie brings the evenings to life. Stories, memory and words rooted in the territory accompany dinner, turning conviviality into an encounter with Sicily’s oral culture.
Inside the experience
The weekend is not a demonstration to watch: every participant takes part in the decisions, preparation and shared table.
The chef introduces their approach, listens to the group and works with participants to shape the weekend: season, ingredients, recipes, timing and organisation.
What you take awayUnderstand how a culinary idea becomes a practical work programme.Ingredients are selected together by considering freshness, origin, seasonality and possible substitutions. When the programme allows, sourcing becomes a direct encounter with producers and places.
What you take awayLearn to choose well before cooking begins.The group organises workstations, tools and sequences, then explores knife skills, bases, cooking methods, textures and timing. The chef corrects gestures and explains the reason behind each step.
What you take awayMethod, organisation and greater technical awareness.Preparation, tasting, adjustment, plating and service are experienced as one continuous process. The finished result is shared at the table and discussed with the chef.
What you take awayA complete view of the dish, from ingredient to guest experience.After the kitchen work, stories, memories and music connected to the territory accompany dinner. Sicily’s oral culture restores the human landscape from which the recipes come.
What you take awayConviviality, storytelling and cuisine brought together in one experience.How the experience works
The weekend follows a clear rhythm, adapted to the recipes, the season and the guest chef’s approach.
Welcome, introduction to the chef, menu planning, shopping preparation and the first evening story.
Sourcing ingredients, preparation, techniques, service and dinner accompanied by the storyteller.
Final preparations, shared lunch, discussion of the work completed and farewell to the campus.
Before you apply
The next step
Request the next programme and tell us about any dietary requirements during your first conversation with the Academy.
