I Quit My Corporate Job to Open a Cooking School in Paris

Sometimes dreams do become a reality. You’ll want to book a Paris Cooking Class with Le Foodist. (Photo by iStock. Design by Lauren DeLuca for Yahoo Travel.)

It started out as a pipe dream, something Fred Pouillot would joke about with his friends and his wife. What if I quit my well-paying corporate job to start something on my own?

And then over time the jokes became more and more serious.

Pouillot has a phD in chemical engineering. Though he was born in France, he worked for years as a Managing Director for various Fortune 500 firms in the United States.

Twenty years ago Pouillot began imagining that he could launch a company that would tell a story about the world using food as the hook.

“I became convinced that the story of our relationship to the world is mostly based on our relationship with food,” Pouillot said.

Hi initial idea was to start a hospitality company, one that would take tourists to spend a week in a new location visiting local farmers, wine makers and cheese makers, and cooking. In 2002 he wrote a business case for the idea when he was finishing his MBA. He presented it to a jury. They told him it was a stupid concept.

The dream stayed a dream.

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He did nothing with it until 2011. Then, together with his wife Amanda, he finally decided to take the plunge, give up the nine to five and launch Le Foodist Paris Cooking Classes, a company that would pair cooking classes and wine tasting with the art of story-telling. “For six months I heard a no from someone every single day. I finally found investors. I used my own money.”

“We don’t have kids and we don’t like skiing,” Pouillot said. “So we figured this could be our next plan.”

And so two and a half years ago Cooking Classes in Paris with Le Foodist was officially born—cooking classes with a cultural twist or rather story-telling with a side of culinary education.

Cooking classes, market visits, macaron intensives. Le Foodist Paris Cooking Classes do it all….and they do it in English. (Photo: Nick Aster)

I found Le Foodist Paris cooking classes through a Viator search for Paris AND “cooking class.” I was traveling to the City of Light on a much-needed vacation and as a newlywed I was desperate to learn to cook something other than pasta, salad and grilled cheese. There is no shortage of cooking lessons in Paris these days. The French will have you believe that the art of cooking itself was actually invented here.

Don’t bother to mention the Italians. They’ll scoff at you and refuse to serve you another baguette.

These days visitors to Paris can find a class that will teach them just about anything from classic French cooking with enough butter to burst your arteries to the creation of the perfect macaron or croissant. I wanted to be able to cook a whole meal for eight people and I wanted to do it well. And then I wanted to tell all those people who came to my dinner party, with a flip of my ponytail, “oh of course I learned this recipe in Paris.”

But I also wanted to have fun while I did it, which was why Le Foodist seemed so appealing. As a journalist I love stories and that was what my six hour day with Pouillot promised to deliver.

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“This is a civilized country. We use butter here,” was one of the first things Pouillot said to me when I entered his kitchen on a chilly Saturday morning. The Le Foodist classroom is a beautifully appointed kitchen and dining space in the Latin Quarter.

We did use butter, and plenty of it. But we also used fresh fruits and vegetables, all bought during a trip to the market with Pouillot before the class even began.

There’s something lovely about wandering around a Parisian market early in the morning. (Photo: Nick Aster)

The whole point of Pouillot’s cooking classes is to pair cooking with conversation. And so over the course of six hours together we not only learned to make Coq au Vin, Poire Belle Helen and Jerusalem Artichoke Velouté, we also learned the origins of goat cheese in France, the importance of the rooster to the French people and the fact that the Jerusalem artichoke is neither an artichoke or Israeli.

Pouillot shows off the proper way to cook vegetables in the Le Foodist kitchen. (Photo: Jo Piazza)

Each course came with its own type of wine, which brought on yet another story. We could have stayed for hours more. In fact, we did overstay our welcome by at least thirty minutes in order to hear Pouillot tell us the story of the origin of the Poire Belle Helen.

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The Le Foodist dining room. (Photo: Jo Piazza)

A perfect coq au vin prepared by a girl who burns eggs. (Photo: Jo Piazza)

Though Pouillot’s classes are in high demand, he still does all of the cooking instruction himself while his wife Amanda does the baking classes. He wants to expand, but is trying to figure out how to do it mindfully.

His goal is to make Le Foodist a global brand that helps travelers around the world discover local cultures through food by offering unique narrative and culinary experiences, the same way he is doing in Paris.

“I think helping people learn how to cook everyday and discover each other’s culture through food and storytelling as they travel the world can help make the world a better place,” Pouillot said. “First because by cooking every day we go a long way in making the world more sustainable. And second because by learning about each other, and doing so around shared meals, we are much less likely to want to kill each other.”

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