Fleur De Lys

Early in 2009 I read about a neat little cooking institute in Columbia called Fleur De Lys that I thought would be a lot of fun for Adam and I to try. I am always trying to think of new things that we can do together. We talked about it for a while but it was eventually pushed under the rug as we stay pretty busy. For our anniversary this year, Adam gave me two gift certificates for the two of us to schedule a cooking school date night.
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We were able to schedule one of the nights for Friday, January 29. When you look at their website you are able to see his cooking schedule so you can pick out the date where you want to eat a particular food.
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Each class holds about 20 to 25 people. He has hands-on classes as well that are typically smaller. For this class he gave us a recipe and cooked while telling us how he was preparing it. That night we had Chilean Sea Bass which is one of our favorites.
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The chef's name is Francois Fisera and he is very French...sometimes you have to listen very carefully at what he is saying to catch everything. He has been presented with numerous awards and international recognition for his culinary excellence. One of particular mention is he was recognized by the French Agricultural Minister with the Order du Merite Agricole. His receipt of this award was due to a lifetime's work. Out of 11,000 worldwide candidates only 1,971 have been presented. Only eight chefs in the United States (regardless of French or American origin) have ever been presented this award. Here is a picture of the chef with Loni Anderson for a commercial (it was the best picture of him I could find).

Here is the cooking school. He is the man in blue (clearly the above picture is from a few years back)

You can see in the above picture that there is a large chart near the window. This is where he keeps a list of his "Top Students" you have to at least attended 100 classes to be put on the board. Each class begins by introducing yourself and telling everyone how many of his classes you have attended. There were people in our class that were in their 200s! Apparently the person who has attended the most has come to 369 classes so far! That is so difficult to comprehend. The chef also takes a group of students to France every year to travel the winery's...but wait...his trips are booked until 2014! This is apparently one popular guy!

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In the back of the class there is this grid-like shelf. Apparently it is part of the French culture that if you frequent a particular restaurant you have a cubby where you keep your cloth napkins. Adam and I were using paper napkins but some people actually store and replenish their slot with cloth napkins. One of their regulars said that they use it to pass notes to their friends as well which I thought was cute.

We stayed until we were the last one's there. Everyone we spoke with was so nice. They kept saying it was "the best kept secret in Columbia" and they use it as their own private dinner club. They also said if you like to eat and drink wine then you are in the right place!

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It was such a neat unique experience and we had such a wonderful time that we are hoping to try to do this once a month. The food was absolutely divine and we really enjoyed the people at our table. So much so that all six of us signed up for the same class in February so we can hang out again!

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Au Revoir until next time!