Questions about this site

A small editorial team, independent of every operator and platform listed on it. Nobody here teaches a class, runs a kitchen or takes a booking, and no page claims that anyone from this site stood in a particular class on a particular evening. The work is reading every live listing, comparing what each one actually includes, and writing the differences down. Menu, duration, group size and policy facts belong to the operator's own listing and are attributed there. How that checking is done is set out on the about page.

No. This site sells nothing, holds no places and takes no payment. Every card here opens the operator's own listing, and the booking, the confirmation email, the voucher, the meeting point and the cancellation window all live on that side. If you have already booked, your confirmation email is the document that matters, not anything on this site.

Through affiliate commission. The links to classes carry a partner tag, and if you book after clicking one, the booking platform pays us a share of the commission it already earns from the operator. You pay exactly what you would pay arriving at that listing directly, because our cut comes out of the platform's margin rather than being added to your ticket. The affiliate disclosure names the platforms involved and sets out the whole arrangement.

No, and none has been offered the chance. Nothing here is sponsored, there is no advertising, and no placement is for sale. Where a section leads with one class, that class is the most-reviewed one in its section, a rule anyone can check against the numbers on the cards. The lineup would look identical if the commission stopped tomorrow.

No. Nothing on this site was written from a complimentary session, a press invitation or an operator's hospitality, and no operator has seen a page before it went live. That is the other side of carrying no first-person accounts here: what you are reading is a comparison built from listings and published policy, not a thank-you note for a free dinner.

They are current from-prices captured off each live listing, not live quotes. A from-price is the floor: the cheapest per-person option on that class at the moment it was read. Your real number depends on the date, the session, the option you choose and the country you book from, which is also why the same class can show a different figure in a different currency. Every card opens the listing, and the listing is always the authority on what you will be charged. Across the ten classes the from-prices run $35 to $117.

They are the booking platforms' own published figures, copied exactly as displayed. Nothing is averaged across platforms, rounded up or quietly rewritten. The ten classes on this site carry 29,977 traveller reviews between them, and that total is the sum of the real per-listing counts rather than an estimate. One class accounts for 14,815 of them on its own. No testimonial appears anywhere on this site unless a real traveller published it on a real listing.

Every rating, review count and price was checked on two independent passes rather than taken from one screen. Two passes agreeing is the bar for printing a figure, which sounds fussy until you watch a price drift between a cached search result and the page it points at. When the two do not agree, the figure simply does not get printed. It is not averaged, not split down the middle and not quietly taken from whichever source looked better. A number two checks cannot agree on is a discrepancy rather than a fact, so the page says what is known and leaves the rest to the live listing. A price that reads differently in two places usually means the platform is showing a localised currency rather than a changed fare, and that is exactly the kind of difference this rule is built to catch.

Prices are re-pulled on roughly a monthly cycle, and anything a reader flags as changed gets re-read straight away rather than waiting for the next round. Ratings and review counts move on their own schedule, upward and slowly, so a count here is a snapshot rather than a live meter. The date of the last check is kept on file rather than stamped on the page, because a visible date tells you when a page was touched and nothing at all about whether the class still runs on a Tuesday. If you find something that no longer matches the listing, tell us and it gets fixed.

Four tests, and a class has to pass all of them. It has to be hands-on and pasta-first, so you leave having actually made something rather than watched. It has to run in Florence or as a day trip out of it. It has to be genuinely bookable right now by an individual, with published dates and a live product page, rather than a school calendar you have to email about. And every figure attached to it has to survive two independent verification passes. Ten listings cleared all four, run by ten different operators, which is why no company appears twice selling the same afternoon under two names.

Florence sells a great many cooking classes, and plenty of good ones are out of scope here rather than rejected. Cookery schools that take bookings only through their own calendars fail the "bookable right now by an individual" test. Multi-day courses and private chef arrangements made by email are a different product from a three-hour class. Menus built around bistecca, gelato or wine tasting with pasta as a side note sit outside what this site compares at all. And anything whose figures could not be confirmed twice is held back rather than published on one source. If you know a class that clears every test and is missing, send the link.

No, and it is worth being blunt: we hold nothing and can move nothing. Your place sits with the operator and the platform you booked through from the moment you paid. Amendments, cancellations, refunds, dietary notes, accessibility questions and a late-running train all go through the confirmation email you were sent, which carries your reference and a message button that reaches the people expecting you. Writing to us first only costs you time.

Every one of the ten classes here cancels free up to 24 hours before it starts, and that is the one policy identical right across the lineup. Inside those 24 hours you are at the operator's discretion, which in practice usually means the money is gone, so a wobbly forecast or an uncertain train is worth acting on the day before rather than the morning of. Seven of the ten also let you reserve now and pay later, which is the useful trick for holding a popular evening slot while the rest of your trip firms up. The other three take payment when you book. Which is which is on each listing's own booking panel.

All ten are listed as running in English, which is the language the instruction and the recipes come in. Transport is the exception rather than the rule: most of these kitchens sit in central Florence and you make your own way to the door, but the Tuscan farmhouse class includes the ride out of the city and back as part of the price, which is a large part of why it costs more than a city-centre evening. One other class includes transport and luggage storage on its own listing. Anything not stated on a listing is not assumed here, so where a card says nothing about transport, plan on walking.