Paris - First came singles bars, dating services, and click-and-date websites. Then young urban professionals searching for a little tenderness turned to speed dating.
Now a pair of French cooking schools are blazing another, somewhat less frenetic, trail in the quest for modern romance: “cook-dating.”
“I came up with the idea” - and coined the term - “when I noticed how much the students in my classes had in common,” said Frederic Chesneau, who runs a small cooking school in the Marais district of central Paris. www.cookdating.com
There were a lot of thirty-something professionals with stressful jobs, similar interests and very little time to meet people,” he said.
So last autumn he began a weekly cooking class for singles only - three men and three women on the first three Thursdays of every month, and a “gays only” gathering of men or women on the last.
The Marais is the most openly and densely gay district in Paris.
Without a big advertising budget, Chesneau had to rely on word of mouth, but within two months his courses were booked up weeks in advance. This season’s classes, which start this month, are equally packed.
The Ritz Escoffier cooking school, a bastion of French gastronomy for more than a century, may or may not have taken a cue from Chesneau’s far humbler operation, but it too will began singles-only classes next week. www.ritzparis.com
Related Travel Information
First came singles bars, dating services, and click-and-date Web sites. Then young urban professional searching for a little tenderness turned to speed dating.
Now a pair of French cooking schools are blazing another, somewhat less frenetic, trail in the quest for modern romance: “cook-dating.”
“I came up with the idea when I noticed how much the students in my classes had in common,” said Frederic Chesneau, who runs a small cooking school in the Marais district of central Paris.
“There were a lot of thirty-something professionals with
Call it female intuition. My wife, Norene, picked up on the decided romantic ambiance that pervaded the dining area when we visited Suffield's Tosca restaurant recently. "Oh yes, you had the most romantic table in the restaurant," says Robin Gath, the general manager of this little gem, which features authentic Italian cuisine, an impressive list of imported and domestic wines, and ambiance aplenty. "The restaurant breeds romance. I've been here three months and we have had three couples get engaged while dining during that time."
True to Gath's description of Tosca's as an "old-fashioned, full-service restaurant," our visit was highlighted by
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Experience the magic of the holiday season in Europe with Air France Holidays' new vacation packages. From only $499 you can spend a memorable Thanksgiving, Christmas or New Year holiday in Nice, Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Prague and other popular European destinations. Book early as space is limited!
Holiday Vacation Packages (partial listing)
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James Purnell, the newly appointed minister for tourism, is the author of an outspoken article which attacked the proposed London bid for the 2012 Olympic Games as a waste of £5 billion and the "wrong priority" for Britain.
Mr Purnell's attack on the Games bid was made just ahead of the Cabinet's decision - in 2003 - on whether to support the attempt to bring the event to Britain for the first time in more than 60 years. Urged on by Tony Blair, the Cabinet gave the bid its full endorsement - despite Mr Purnell's article, written in his capacity as