Cookery Magic
Cookery Magic is run out of chef Ruqxana Vasanwala’s home kitchen. You get the complete local experience, from visiting the neighbourhood wet market with Ruqxana to buy your ingredients, to hanging out in her home with her many cats. While most of the classes take place in her home kitchen, one unique experience offered seasonally is the Pulau Ubin Kampong Cooking Escapade, where you take a ferry to the remote island of Pulau Ubin and learn to cook a traditional Malay dish in a 100-year old village house.
Cookery Magic, 117 Fidelio St, Singapore. +65-9665-6831
Food Playground
Food Playground doesn’t just teach you how to cook local Singaporean dishes; their Cultural Cooking Class also dives deep into the history and culture of the dish, and lets you better appreciate the meal that you are about to prepare. All the work is done in pairs, which is a great way for solo travellers to have some fun while making new friends. This cooking school also has a great location in a traditional shophouse located in the middle of ethnic enclave and tourist hotspot Chinatown.
Food Playground, 24A Sago Street, Singapore. +65-9452-3669
Grandmothers’ Recipes
Learn to cook authentic Teochew-Peranakan style cuisine with Rosaline Soon of Grandmothers’ Recipes. She is the author of three cookbooks focused on her heritage, Peranakan, which is a culture that mixes Malay and Chinese influences. Rosaline also runs a course teaching new domestic helpers to cook local dishes for their families. If you’d rather focus on eating than cooking, she also hosts home-cooked dinners for small groups, often with her own family in tow.
Courtesy Grandmothers' Recipes, Tales from two Peranakan Kitchens
Grandmothers’ Recipes, 81 Gardenia Road, Singapore +65 6459 7549
Little Green Kitchen
Former lawyer Shalu Asnani runs the Little Green Kitchen, a food consultancy and cooking studio that focuses solely on vegetarian food. On a quest to prove that vegetarian food doesn’t equal boring or tasteless, Shalu offers vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free cooking classes, as well as classes on a wide variety of Asian cuisines. Her website also has many vegetarian recipes, so you can whip up a quick healthy meal on your own.
Little Green Kitchen, 1 Hacienda Grove, Singapore +65 9763 1483
CULINARYON
CULINARYON emphasises fun in their cooking classes, which include bonding and games as well as cooking instruction. Each studio is even equipped with its own bar and barman. They also have some of the largest cooking entertainment centres in Asia and Europe: its Singapore cooking studio is a sprawling 7,000 sq ft, and is especially popular for hosting corporate and team-building events. Tourists usually opt for their courses showcasing local Singaporean dishes, including satay, chili crab and pandan chiffon cake.
CulinaryOn, One Raffles Place, Tower 2 #04-63, Singapore. +65-3108-0385
Coriander Leaf
Coriander Leaf is a well known Pan-Asian restaurant in Singapore that holds cooking demonstrations dedicated to Asian cuisine. You create 5-6 food items over 3.5 hours during the cooking demos that are conducted personally by chef and founder Samia Ahad. Classes emphasize home-style cooking that’s easy to replicate at home. The Streets of Singapore demo covers local favourite dishes like Hainanese Chicken Rice and Chilli Crab, while the Singapore Classics demo covers typical dishes you might find in a Singaporean family’s home.
Coriander Leaf, 30 Victoria Street, #02-01 CHIJMES, Singapore. +65-6532-3357