RESTAURANTS : Cooking Up Classes in Restaurants

There are cooking classes everywhere: Hardware stores, fancy cooking schools, cookware shops, colleges and universities, even private homes all have the sounds and smells of food preparation closely scrutinized by students.

But the most fascinating classroom of all is the restaurant kitchen. It has a cachet all its own, like an artist’s studio or a weaver’s workshop: This is where professionals do it right, every day. We’re being allowed into the inner sanctum, privy to the secrets of the culinary universe.

“A restaurant kitchen is a great atmosphere, it lets you get behind the scenes,” says chef Frank Laucis. “It’s almost like taking people out to the studios when they’re filming. They can see exactly what the inner parts of an operation are. It seems to add that little something.”

Surprisingly, few classes are taught in restaurants, although in some ways they are the perfect arena: The chef knows his way around, has all the favorite tools nearby, usually has a skeleton staff on hand to fetch and carry--and doesn’t have to pay any extra rent.

But restaurant kitchens have two serious drawbacks as classrooms: The sight lines are terrible, and the seating is inadequate or uncomfortable or both.

At Rebecca’s, the popular Mexican beanery in Venice, chef William Hufferd stands behind a counter in front of the restaurant’s grill. Behind him is a partition that separates the active kitchen from the public one. We sit on stools or perch on stairs overlooking Hufferd and the grill. Some of us are inveterate class takers: “Last year I did Cajun,” says one sturdy matron, “but now I want to try Mexican. Mexican is in now.” She has come to the right class: Hufferd is teaching four sessions on Mexican cooking, and he starts with the basics: flour and corn tortillas, two salsas, guacamole and even tortilla chips, which we devour almost before they hit the plate.

There are too many of us: not enough seats and not quite enough food.

There is never quite enough food, because we are allowed only tastes. See this, sip this, nibble that. These classes usually take place from about 9 or 10 in the morning until 1 or 2 in the afternoon. Stomachs rumble.

Hufferd is well prepared, a little nervous, but he enjoys his work. “I get a lot out of it,” he says. “I have to spend a lot of time preparing for it; a lot goes into research, making sure I know my things.”

At the Siamese Princess one recent Sunday afternoon, about 24 students gather for instruction by chef Victor Sodsook in the restaurant. Not the kitchen--the restaurant. Tables have been pushed aside and two long tables set up for Sodsook, with three rows of chairs facing him. For three hours he prepares Thai appetizers using only an electric wok and a hot plate.

Sodsook’s English is fractured and he sometimes deviates from the recipes; I wouldn’t recommend these classes for someone who has never cooked before. But Sodsook is a real performer; the more wine he drinks (and we are all treated to generous amounts of the grape), the looser and funnier he becomes. He starts out stuffing chicken wings and marinating cucumbers, wraps meatballs with noodles (6 little balls, 24 students; this little piggy got none), whips up a red curry paste and ends with chicken sate and peanut sauce. “Very rare item,” he says, giggling and pointing to the jar of Skippy peanut butter he opens for the sauce.

Chef Frank Laucis is standing in what was, until two weeks before the class, his restaurant kitchen at the Chronicle in Santa Monica. He has returned to teach this class in his former domain: It is a huge kitchen: rooms of walk-in coolers, acres of stainless steel and the damp, warm, slightly antiseptic odor of a commercial cooking area. About 15 students concentrate on Laucis’ every move. A few of them have never cooked more than eggs or hamburgers, but most are there to expand their knowledge--and to see how a young, talented chef devises a meal.

Laucis, has an informal, casual teaching style, as if he might be improvising as he goes along. Almost: He devised the shrimp with tiny cucumber balls and dill sauce the night before the first class. He must work well under pressure, because that dish was the best thing I’ve tasted in months. Years. The other class members were polite and nibbled small pieces of shrimp. I bided my time, and when everyone else had moved away, I shamelessly ripped apart the tails for those last little hidden bits.

Did I mention how there is never quite enough food?

Laucis is now chef at the recently opened City of Angels Brewing Co. on 4th Street in Santa Monica. Beer is brewed on the premises, and Laucis hopes to lure students to his new kitchen too. “I’d like to teach a class on the brewing of beer, how beers can interact with food, using the various malts and barleys.”

The Madame Wu fan club is also in Santa Monica. Sylvia Wu, an institution after 25 years in the restaurant business, is teaching a Monday-night class. (Several students have had dinner before class; they may be on to something.) Like Sodsook, Wu teaches in the restaurant, in a large red party room set up with a demonstration cooktop and a few chairs facing it. Each student is given a signed paperback copy of “Madame Wu’s Art of Chinese Cooking,” the one with a photo of Wu and Cary Grant on the back. Wu has put a mirror over the cooking area, so we can see what she does, but there is not enough light: We see shadowy hands and dark shapes.

This night’s class will be a menu from her book: chicken salad, winter melon soup, almond chicken, Wu’s beef and pork fried rice. (We never do get to the almond chicken.) An assistant hands Wu the ingredients as she calls for them--as they are read to Wu by members of the class following along in the book. Now and then, an ingredient is changed, or the amount altered, or it is simply missing and fetched from the kitchen. Wu is gracious and knowledgeable about cooking, but she is unsure of the stove and tentative in her movements. At moments there is a kind of slow-motion Marx Brothers mania to this: the burner that does not light, the cleaver that will not cut, the salad served with no utensils, the missing chopped onion.

Later, Wu provides an interesting comparison: We taste her restaurant version of Wu’s beef, which has been marinated overnight, with her “home-style” prepared for us without marination. The restaurant’s version is darker, glossier, richer--as it should be, she says. But the pork fried rice is better made “fresh” (with day-old rice) at home, and those who have sampled her restaurant fare chorus agreement.

“Any questions?” Wu asks when the cooking is over, the food devoured. A hand shoots up. “What was Cary Grant’s favorite dish here?”

No hesitation. “Chicken salad.”

The Chronicle, Madame Wu and Rebecca’s classes are offered through UCLA Extension; the Siamese Princess handles its classes independently. But don’t think these are the only opportunities: If you have a favorite restaurant whose food you’re pining to cook, ask the chef if he’d consider teaching a class.

Basic advice: Eat a hearty breakfast, lunch or dinner and get there early enough to claim a good seat. Ask questions, participate as much as possible--and be prepared for almost anything.