One of the hardest things to figure out when you travel is whether you're truly experiencing what the locals experience, or whether you're falling into a tourist trap. Airbnb Cooking Experiences help you answer that question once and for all —at least in one or two of your meals. Now you will be able to specialize your experience in any given area of the world with one of the most important sensory experiences a person can have.
Airbnb Cooking Experiences will allow people to book cooking experiences in more than 70 countries around the world, according to its press release. From farmers and pastry chefs to local families, you can now choose to experience the region's unique cuisine in a particularly authentic way: through the people who know it best.
Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky said in a press release,
Ever since our first guests traveled through Airbnb, we’ve realized that shared meals are the key to unlocking culture and fostering connections. With Airbnb Cooking Experiences, we hope to revive the tradition of people coming together to make and share meals, and in this way help preserve the unique recipes that are shared in home kitchens around the world.
Airbnb Cooking isn't just about making authentic recipes more accessible to travelers, though. It also ensures that local food, recipes and traditions are preserved by working with Slow Food, a grassroots organization dedicated to preventing their disappearance.
According to Airbnb, every booking option on its Airbnb Cooking feature is thoroughly vetted by Slow Food to ensure that the "local" and "recipes" in question are in fact true and accurate representations of the specific region. What’s more, the organization will also work with the company to ensure these culinary experiences function within the highest principles of food sustainability and biodiversity conservation.
In other words, the partnership will ensure these culinary experiences use recipes and ingredients that are sustainable and accessible from the region. You can learn more about Slow Food’s efforts in food sustainability and biodiversity conservation here.
On the Airbnb Cooking Experiences page, you'll find a variety of options to choose from, including "Roll out pasta with an Italian grandma" and "Prepare Portuguese dishes with a drag queen." Of course, what you cook (and with whom) depends a lot on the country you're visiting or where you live (no one is saying you can't book a cooking experience in your own city!). According to the website, more than 1,900 culinary experiences are available for booking. There's also the opportunity to "pop up" with "local celebrities," which is one of the great reasons to visit the site from time to time.
When it comes to price, the cost of an Airbnb cooking experience will vary. This probably has to do with all the variables that come into play: Cooking experiences can vary depending on the time invested, and cooking experiences are conducted by a variety of people, from locals to professional chefs. For example, two hours of making soba noodles in a traditional Japanese home costs $53 per person, while five hours of learning how to cook like a "Chef of Provence" in France costs $171 per person.
Either way, it's almost inevitable that checking out the Airbnb cooking page will make your mouth water. Foodies around the world take note.
