Tables at fine-dining restaurants are known for their fancy white-linen outfits, unlike tables in home kitchens, which are notorious for going nude. Get the tools to teach your kitchen some manners with today's Groupon to Cook Au Vin. Choose between the following options:
- For $125, you get a BYOB pastry and baking class for two (up to a $260 value).
- For $65, you get a BYOB pastry and baking class for one (up to a $130 value).
Cook Au Vin’s French-born head chef Vincent Colombet helps students to follow in his artisanal footsteps. During three-hour classes, groups of up to eight students don provided caps and aprons and pore over recipes for sweet French desserts. Under the watchful eye of professional pastry chefs and veteran sticks of butter, participants try their hand at dishes such as French-style macaroons, chocolate ganache, and napoleon pastries. As a fun-fueling bonus, students can bring bottles of champagne or port to sip during class while nibbling on their ultimate creations and learning the French word for "éclair."
Cook Au Vin
With baskets full of hand-plucked, wild blueberries, Vincent Colombet and his cousins happily crammed into their Alsatian grandmother's tiny kitchen. In that quaint room, equipped with only a wood-burning cast-iron stove, Vincent learned over the years how to tuck berries into pies, prepare meats sourced from neighboring farms, and eventually produce elaborate meals for his entire family.
Driven by his passion for French family-style cuisine, he traveled to Paris before a longing for experiences abroad tugged him across the pond and into the arms of the Windy City in 2004. The following year he opened Cook Au Vin, where he leads three-hour BYOB cooking classes centered around classic techniques and organic ingredients. Patrons may also enlist the Cook Au Vin team to cater special events, or swing by Colombet's Logan Square bakery, La Boulangerie, for butter-infused inhalations, freshly made crepes, and crusty baguettes.