Education & Classes in Cicero

Many cooks would insist that a trusted recipe is the foundation of a good meal, but at Cooking Fools, it’s the first thing to go. Their cooking classes unshackle pupils from their cookbooks and encourage creativity in the kitchen. Their chefs exercise the same artistic license over the meals they assemble for catering, takeout, and cooking parties. Adhering to three main principles—quality ingredients, good style, and common sense—the staff crafts healthy versions of typical to-go food, decreasing saturated fats but never flavor. Many of their entrees radiate global inspiration, and are arranged in a modern, artistic way that doesn’t outshine flavors. In keeping with the contemporary theme, the servers who circulate the understated dishes at catered events are young, trendy, and rarely whip out their license to prove that they’re young and trendy.

Give a guy a fish, and he'll eat for a day (assuming it's one ginormous fish); teach a guy to make perfect sushi rolls, and he'll still mooch all your fish, but hey, free sushi. Today's Groupon can save you from embarrassing Thanksgivings, disastrous dinners with in-laws, and foolhardy tamale-making face-offs. For $45, you get $85 toward a cooking class at Kendall College on Goose Island. Though most classes cost $85, you can also use it toward one of Kendall's pricier classes or for you and a friend to attend a lower-cost class; just pay the difference (you must use your Groupon all at once).

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.

Big City Swing’s mantra is to be fit, be fun, and be social, and it conquers all three of these goals by teaching dance styles that stem from the social clubs of the Prohibition era. Within the spacious ceilings and exposed brick walls of the studio, instructors delve into swing dance and Lindy Hop styles characterized by twirling, leg kicks, and lightning-fast rhythms.

Courses are taught in a four-week series or single-session workshops that also cover styles such as Balboa, the Charleston, and blues. Students seeking more individualized attention can schedule a private lesson or eschew the tradition of the post-nuptial hokey pokey by enrolling in the wedding-dance program. In addition to studio and onsite instruction, Big City Swing’s professional team also performs choreographed numbers at special events. Free street parking is available near the studio.

At The ComedySportz Theatre, audience suggestions keep an all-ages, family-friendly and fast-paced vortex of scenes, games, and songs spinning in competitive shows that pit two improv teams against each other. Inside the intimate, 149-seat theater, spontaneity rules as a referee moderates the all-ages-appropriate hilarity pitched between the Chicago Bosses and The Evanston Express. At the end of each comedic duel, the points and audience votes are tallied to determine the winning team, sentencing the losers to feed the doves that live inside the winners’ top hats.

ComedySportz's seasoned instructors also host regular workshops to teach aspiring yuksters the art of improvised hilarity and the essential virtues of spontaneity, risk taking, and engagement with the moment. Through scene work, ComedySportz games, and short- and long-form improv, students learn to keep audiences roaring in order to jump-start a career or become a more affable bank robber.