My Unforgettable Cooking Experience at Mama Florence

Why the original is still the best

If you’re planning a trip to Tuscany, you should know that booking a cooking class in Florence is practically a rite of passage. It will give you a chance to learn how to recreate some of your favorite Tuscan dishes back home but also a chance to change up the pace between sightseeing and museum visits and art overload that can occur in a packed itinerary. With so many options on offer in Florence itself, it might be hard to know which are the authentic culinary experiences from the more generic cooking classes or market visits.

This is where I come in, always ready to “sacrifice myself” and try these experiences out for you ? to then let you know the how, who, what and why of why you should consider it! It also gives me the chance to once again feel like a visitor who arrives in Florence for the first time, engaging with other visitors to find out about their favorite places, food and more in their travels in Italy. For food, one of my favorite things to recommend is to try out a cooking class while in Florence. This time I decided to go straight to one of the local pioneers who started it all in town, Mama Florence.

Mama Florence is a professional cooking school in Florence designed for “foodies” and teaching classes in English. I wanted to dive into how this iconic school sets itself apart from the crowd, and share what it’s actually like to spend a morning or afternoon in their kitchen. Spoiler alert: it involves incredible wine, a lot of laughter, and some of the best pasta I’ve ever eaten.

The original “Mama” with over a decade of culinary magic

Here is a fun fact I learned while researching them: Mama Florence is the original. Founded back in 2012 by Vanessa Held, with roots in rural Tuscany and a degree in Agronomy and decades of first-hand experience in the food and wine industry, Mama Florence was the city’s very first professional cooking school designed specifically for foodies. 

Because they’ve been doing this for over fourteen years, they have honed their classes to perfection. While a lot of copycat schools have popped up over the years even using similar names, Mama Florence remains the gold standard. They are a fully licensed, professional school (holding a strict Italian SAB license, which means highest-tier hygiene and safety compliance) operating out of a gorgeous, air-conditioned venue complete with private dining rooms, a wine cellar, and a stunning garden patio. With full-time professionals in the kitchen and in their walking tours.

But enough about the base - let’s talk about the actual experience!

The experience was full of laughs, compliments and culinary ease

Walking into the kitchen, any nerves I had about my chopping skills instantly vanished. Our chef Giacomo was an absolute delight, poking fun at all of our skills. Instead of a stiff or intimidating setting, the atmosphere felt like hanging out in the kitchen of a very talented, very hilarious Italian friend who we could learn from.

Giacomo kept the room laughing with jokes about how much an “Italian pinch” of salt amounted to and how much oil was needed to “cover” the bottom of a pot (a lot by most of our standards!). He shared stories about Italian food culture and traditions as he discussed the menu we were going to prepare and in what order. As we started the class, he would ask us one by one to participate in the mixing, cutting and stirring of the ingredients into the pots. We were all participating in one form or another.

What I appreciated most was his teaching style. He had a magical way of breaking down what seemed complex into manageable techniques — like getting the perfect texture for handmade pasta dough — and making it seem effortlessly easy. The time in the kitchen flew by!

Under his guidance, recipes that would usually intimidate me at home with so many steps were broken down into easy steps that felt totally natural as we proceeded with each dish. It wasn't just a performance to watch: it was hands-on learning that actually gave me the confidence to recreate the dishes at home (which is a major plus, you get a link to all the online recipes they use in the cooking classes to access back home).

So what was on the menu that day? We learned how to make fresh egg pasta tagliatelle and the "ragu" that goes with it, the classic Italian meat sauce, as well as ravioli filled with spinach and ricotta, flavored with a sage-infused butter, more delicious than you can imagine if you've never had it. For the butter sauce, we used these really large sage leaves grown in their own patio garden! Giacomo shared his secret for large leaves with us: he fertilizes all of the aromatics in the garden with any leftover coffee at the end of the day which makes the sage leaves grow like crazy (with no sugar, of course)!

As an appetizer, we also prepared a cannellini bean with black kale mix used as a topping on toasted Tuscan bread called a "crostone" and made panna cotta for dessert, served with a berry compote infused with mint leaves. The order of preparation does not follow the order of the meal, since the panna cotta was the first thing we prepared. Doesn’t it seem like a lot? Yet, it didn’t seem complicated at all as we followed each of the steps of preparing the meal.

It was fun to socialize with the others participating in the cooking class, a little bit while we chopped and stirred and much more as we ended the cooking class with the meal. My group was a total of 5, with two couples plus me, so a small group that permitted all of us to be curious and ask questions of the others.

The Grand Finale was to eat our feast, along with local wines

After we finished preparing the pasta, we checked to see if the sauces were ready: the ragu had been simmering in the background and the pan with butter set to melt over the pot of water as it heated to cook the pasta. All we needed to do at that point was cook the pasta and get everything plated. We created the crostoni ourselves, deciding how much black pepper we wanted to season the top and moved on to the best part: eating what we had prepared!

Mama Florence serves your hard work as a proper, seated meal. This is the only part we didn’t do “hands on”: Giacomo cooked the pasta and prepared the plates while we started on our antipasto and Yenn presented a wine to accompany each course as we went along. The meal was spectacular: the flavors were incredibly vibrant since everything was prepared with fresh, seasonal ingredients from local Tuscan producers - and because we had made it ourselves!

As I just mentioned, every course was expertly paired with exceptional local wines. Swirling a glass of Tuscan red while digging into a plate of pasta I had just rolled out myself was one of those special moments that make the experience unforgettable.

Do I recommend it? Yes, it is worth it!

If you want a budget photo-op where you just throw some flour around while the chef cooks for you, this might not be your place. But if you want a real, meaningful connection to Tuscan traditions, backed by over a decade of professional expertise, Mama Florence is worth every single penny.

They offer group classes as well as private classes and tours as well as cooking classes to learn how to make other types of pasta, pizza, gelato and traditional Tuscan cuisine classes. If you're interested in a deep dive into culinary arts, they also organize week-long culinary programs. Some days the classes are in the morning, some days in the afternoon - there is something that will meet your schedule. 

Who would love this Pasta Making Class?

I did the pasta making class and I think it would be perfect for anyone...

• Searching for an experience beyond the “museums and monuments” in Italy! 
• Who loves food and wine and also wants to make a connection with the local Italian and Tuscan culture: learn the why behind the recipe!
• Traveling as a couple who wants to create a shared core memory of being in Italy and learning how to make ravioli and pasta together in a relaxed setting
• Those traveling in a group or as a family with various ages need to find an activity that everyone can enjoy, and cooking together bridges all generational gaps perfectly!
• Solo travelers can take this opportunity to interact with strangers in a shared environment, laughing over the chef’s jokes as well as your own experiences in the kitchen (or lack thereof). By the time you sit down to eat the meal you created together, the table of strangers will have set the foundation for more casual and lively conversation.

What else can I say? It was a fun experience, it’s authentic, the team treats you like family, and you’ll leave with a full belly and a huge smile. You can head back home and prepare a Tuscan meal that will bring back memories of your vacation in Florence. As you plan your trip to Florence, do yourself a favor and book the original cooking class experience with Mama Florence!

Have you ever taken a cooking class in Italy? What's your favorite Tuscan (or Italian) dish to cook? Let us know in the comments below!