Verona: Pasta & Tiramisu Cooking Class with Wine

4.96

(165 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I noticed was the clatter of pans and that warm, floury smell drifting out from the kitchen. We’d barely stepped inside the restaurant in Verona when someone handed me a glass of Prosecco—cold, fizzy, just sweet enough. Our chef, who introduced himself as Marco (he winked when I tried “buongiorno”), waved us over to these long wooden tables already dusted with flour. It felt like we were backstage at some Italian food show, but less polished—more laughter, more mess.

I always thought making pasta from scratch would be intimidating, but Marco made it feel like play. He showed us how to mound up the flour right on the table (“like a volcano,” he said), crack eggs into the center, then mix it all with our hands. I definitely got dough stuck under my nails—didn’t care. At one point my dough looked more like scrambled eggs than anything edible; Marco just grinned and helped knead it back together. The whole time there was this steady background hum: pots bubbling, someone humming an old song in Italian near the stove. I kept glancing out at the city through a little window—sunlight bouncing off red rooftops.

When we moved on to tiramisu, I thought I knew what to expect (I’ve eaten plenty), but whisking egg yolks and folding in mascarpone felt different with everyone joking around. Li from our group tried saying “savoiardi” and got it so wrong Marco almost cried laughing—she took it well though. The espresso for dipping ladyfingers smelled strong enough to wake up half of Verona. We layered everything together and left it to chill while we cleaned up (sort of).

Sitting down at the end was honestly my favorite part—a big table set with our own pasta dishes and glasses of local wine. There was this easy feeling between everyone, even though most of us had only met that morning. Eating something you made yourself in a place like this… can’t really describe it without sounding cheesy. I still think about that first bite of tiramisu—soft, cold, bittersweet—and how nobody rushed through lunch or checked their phones for ages.