A Week with The Tuscan Chef at the Villas of Vorno
Lucca, Tuscany

The International Kitchen first helped us with selecting the cooking vacation that met our requirements. There are literally thousands to choose from and Karen’s expertise matched us perfectly (after just a couple email exchanges) with the Week with the Tuscan Chef at the Villas of Vorno. The villa was ideal and Lucca was as picturesque as everyone says as well as a great central location for enjoying all the beauty of Tuscany. The flexibility in working with Valter and Julia to customize our day trips and the cooking lessons to our group (very mixed levels of cooking abilities) was so easy. Valter and Julia know the area and make you feel at home immediately. Valter is an amazing chef, a good teacher and an excellent tour guide. His sommelier expertise is a huge plus to learning about and enjoying all the wines of Italy. Their support staff is professional and more importantly, fun to have around. In addition to a perfect week at the villa in Tuscany, International Kitchen helped us with tours, dinner reservations and hotel arrangements in Rome and Florence. With 14 in our group, I still can’t believe that every single detail of our trip went off without a single problem! Kudos to you all!!!

Everything you did for us worked out very well. We really liked the hotel in Rome – The Rose Garden Palace. The location is great and the breakfast was very good. Our tour guide for the Vatican was excellent and we would recommend her as the only way to see the Vatican! Our dinner reservation in Rome was at Pier Luigi. We were a little “railroaded” in the beginning by our waiter, who just started ‘bringing food’. Once we reined him in, the food and location were great. In Florence, I booked us at the Gallery Art Hotel and we all really liked the very modern style and location. We took a walking tour of Florence with Samantha and I would say she was the ‘weakest’ tour guide we had (not bad, but not great either). Although to see Florence in 3 hours, a tour is a must. In the same afternoon, we took a museum tour with Elizabeth and her enthusiasm and knowledge of art was amazing. However, we were too exhausted to truly appreciate her. I think it would have been better if we had just done the museum tour with a little extra time walking between the two museums to cover some of the history of Florence rather than doing two tours in one day (Elizabeth really could have/did cover it all very well). The dinner reservation you made at Il Latini was a great way to end the trip. The wine cellar location is a must, the service was excellent and the family style dinner was fun and good food!

John W., PA

First of all, the Villa was fabulous! Chef Valter Roman was superb. We could not have asked for a better chef. We spent considerable time researching Tuscan Cooking schools and settled on this one solely because of the chef. He exceeded all of our expectations and then some. He is a phenom, because not only is he a superb chef, but one of the few who is an expert pastry chef as well. He is also an historical travel guide who provided info to all of us on our daily tours that was not in the tour guidebooks. He is also a sommelier, which was greatly appreciated because every day he would introduce different wines and the history behind the vintage etc, which we could not have received in the normal cooking school situation to this extent. I would recommend him and his school to anyone. The recipes and techniques he demonstrated are being copied by many of us back home, and we cannot thank him enough for the experience. He was very flexible in his appoach to cooking and student participation and knowledgeable in so many areas of Italy that every day was an adventure. Best holiday of our life!! Not to be missed! A definite item on any bucket list. I would do another cooking school but only with Chef Roman.
Bonnie A., AB