Riverside Kitchen

Riverside Kitchen, the city’s premier cooking school, sits perched above Riverside Market and draws inspiration from the local flavours and friendly faces found on site everyday. If you’ve visited the market, Riverside Kitchen’s unique fitout has, most likely, already caught your eye.

The cooking school’s French doors allow the market’s energy to intermingle with the school itself. Inside you’ll find eight expertly designed cooking stations that can be moved to and fro depending on the class or event at hand. The gleaming chef’s station at the front is where most classes get started and the family style dining room, located at the back, is where they wrap up. Wide windows line the exterior wall, let in plenty of natural light and offer sweeping views of Lichfield Street and the Port Hills beyond. 

While Riverside Kitchen is kitted out with the best cooking equipment, it still maintains an approachable, welcoming feel. This only makes sense as all of their cooking classes are designed to be immediately applicable at home, in your own kitchen. 

Courses here cover a wide variety of cuisines and culinary skills. Every course offers something to novices and trained cooks alike and all include a demonstration component. Students gather around the chef’s station and get to know the featured chef, their story and cooking style all while watching a bit of culinary mastery take place. Featured chefs hail from Canterbury and beyond and the rotating lineup means there's always a new chef to learn from and a new cuisine to learn about.

In the Italian class, for example, the chef demonstrates delicious dishes like bruschetta, gnocchi, ravioli and tiramisu. After the demonstration, students prepare several of the dishes at their stations with support from the chef and Riverside Kitchen’s friendly prep team. At the end of each class students and chefs gather together to enjoy the meal (and wine pairings!) at the long dining room table. 

Many of the ingredients used at Riverside Kitchen are sourced from the market’s ground floor vendors meaning that locals learn how to best use seasonal produce in their own kitchens and visitors get an authentic taste of Canterbury’s bounty. 

In addition to being informative, each class is social and free flowing - the perfect environment in which to learn about and enjoy food together. Riverside Kitchen understands the relationship between food, culture and connection and their courses offer all three. Practical skills courses, like the knife skills class, are also available on a regular basis.

Since opening in 2019, Riverside Kitchen has made headlines and attracted visitors like Duchess Camilla and Prince Charles and played host to plenty of corporate parties, team-building events and celebrations. Vouchers are available as are degustation menus with wine pairings. 

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