First came singles bars, dating services, and click-and-date websites. Then young urban professional searching for a little tenderness turned to speed dating.
Now a pair of French cooking schools are blazing another, somewhat less frenetic, trail in the quest for modern romance: ”cook-dating”.
”I came up with the idea” — and coined the term — ”when I noticed how much the students in my classes had in common,” said Frederic Chesneau, who runs a small cooking school in the Marais district of central Paris. (www.cookdating.com)
”There were a lot of thirty-something professionals with stressful jobs, similar interests and very little time to meet people,” he said.
So last fall he began a weekly cooking class for singles only — three men and three women on the first three Thursdays of every month, and a ”gays only” gathering of men or women on the last.
The Marais is the most openly and densely gay district in Paris. Without a big advertising budget, Chesneau had to rely on word of mouth, but within two months his courses were booked up weeks in advance. This season’s classes, which start this month, are equally packed.
The Ritz Escoffier cooking school, a bastion of French gastronomy for more than a century, may or may not have taken a cue from Chesneau’s far humbler operation, but it too will began singles-only classes next week. (www.ritzparis.com)
”We are a very storied school, steeped in tradition,” commented director Bruno Sagne. ”But we wanted to do something new, something of our time.”
Dubbed ”Ritzy Rendezvous,” the cooking-for-singles classes target potentially amorously culinary amateurs between 25 and 40, but have no formal age restriction, he said.
”Meeting people is more and more difficult — that is a fact,” Sagne said.
”But even if you don’t meet the right someone, you will learn how to cook.”
The menus will stay on the simple side, just a main dish and a dessert. The inaugural class, for example, will feature free-range chicken breast stuffed with mushrooms and truffles.
This will not be the first time the Ritz has served up romance in the kitchen. Last Valentine’s Day, couples divided their labours to cook a love-feast for two: she, a starter and main course, he, two desserts –one for Madame, one for Monsieur.
Yet another pillar of the French cooking establishment, LeNotre, will initiate classes for men only this month at their sumptuous school inside the Pavillon d’Elysee. (www.lenotre.fr)
”Men get nervous cooking in front of women,” a spokesperson for the school said. ”The course teaches them to make a meal for their wives — or their girlfriends, fiancées, whatever,” she said.
”Cooking has always been linked to the art of seduction,” she added.
Especially in France.
But sharing a meal — and wielding a whisk together — can apparently have a lasting impact too.
”I know of at least two couples that met in my classes,” Chesneau said, clearly pleased that he had concocted a recipe for lasting relationships.
As the British writer and wit Bernard Shaw once remarked, ”There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” – Sapa-AFP