Cooking Classes With a Top Chef Alumnus

Walter Nicholls

March 4, 2009

Top Chef competitor and cooking instructor Carla Hall

Top Chef competitor and cooking instructor Carla Hall

Photo: Matthew Lyons

Carla Hall of Silver Spring-based Alchemy Caterers may have lost the title of Top Chef on the Bravo TV series' cooking competition, but she is now back in the kitchen, this time conducting private, group classes. The day or evening sessions are held in the culinary studios of CulinAerie cooking school near Logan Circle. A typical, three-hour course begins with a 45-minute lecture, followed by a hands-on replication of a three-course menu (appetizer, entrée, dessert) and ends with students and their instructor dining and discussing their work. The cost is $95 per person (with a minimum group size of 12 and maximum 32) and includes food, wine, and instruction.

At a fundraiser for Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center, caterer Blue Plate created a five-course dinner inspired by how a child with autism experiences the world. One course was called 'Things Aren’t Always As They Seem.' It was meant to surprise the guests, with cheese molded to resemble summer fruits, pumpernickel “dirt,” chocolate-covered “grasshoppers,” edible “pebbles,” and grilled bread.

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