Best One-Day Introductory Cooking Class

The New School—Cooking 101 One-Day Workshop

131 W. 23rd St.; 212-255-4141

In an easygoing five-hour Sunday workshop, Michael Krondl teaches the bare basics of cooking from the New School’s stainless-steel teaching kitchen located at the Inn on 23rd Street. Twelve students learn the knife skills and recipe-decoding necessary to prepare sustenance like roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, vinaigrettes, guacamole, and banana-bread muffins. Krondl answers off-the-cuff questions with authority (“You only need two good blades: a chef’s knife and a paring knife”) and powers through just enough material to give students confidence to put away the takeout menus ($170; $35 materials fee).

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine

Competition breeds the best. If only one pizzeria existed in New York, of course, there’d be no real winning slice. Thankfully, we’ll never know what that sorry situation tastes like, since pizza—like dance parties, dog runs, and fried chicken—has to evolve upward here.