Kitchen on Fire

We had a great experience here with a one-​day class — I was so impressed I signed up my girlfriend to take the 12-​week class.

Today I attended the second holiday cooking party at Kitchen on Fire I’ve had the good fortune to be invited to. What a wonderful experience! The ingredients are top notch, the chefs knowledgeable and patient teachers, the setting is comfortable, and the resulting meal scrumptious. From the most seasoned cooks to the total novice, everyone at the party had a wonderful time cooking and eating together. I can’t wait til next year!

I visited kitchen on fire with my work group for our holiday celebration. Chef Olive was absolutely amazing, he was so knowledgeable and such a great teacher. Myself and my staff thoroughly enjoyed our day cooking our meal. We were beginning to make plans to come back again, and until our day was completely ruined.
When’s lunch was served and our event was over, chef Olive had to step away but he invited us to stay as long as we would like to finish up eating and enjoying each other’s company. Shortly there after the office staff woman had to step out as well to move her car, at this point the kitchen staff (dishwasher), Who had been incredibly nice all day, began yelling at my group. Threatening and saying very unkind words to us as we were packaging up the remainder of the desserts and tinfoil to take with us. He was yelling that it was against the rules and we could not remove food from the kitchen. (If that were the case, it was an honest mistake, and he could have simply told us). Instead he chose to raise his voice and repeatedly yell at us. We all left very upset and dinar day on a very very low note.
I would have loved to give our day five stars however at this point I would not consider going back because of how poorly we were treated by the kitchen staff.

I brought my wife here for the Israeli Street Food class and we loved it. Mat was a great chef and we will definitely come back. The kitchen is in a great location in gourmet ghetto so get ready to spend a memorable night!

Chef Olive & Chef Gaby: Thank you for making this «non-​cooking» person have such a great time!!! Loved your teachings and your personalities! Most awesome and enjoyable day!!!

My boyfriend planned the evening for us. We made Spanish tapas with instructors Chef Olive and Chef Matt – both were awesome! There were a total of 5 dishes so there were five stations. We each started at a station, but we were able to walk around to learn how to make the other dishes. It was great because the dishes we made were shared among the couples. Everything was awesome, learned so much and ate so much! Both chefs as well as the interns are willing to answer any questions you may have (aside from the dishes assigned that night). What was also great was that they encouraged us to experiment with our food. We were making regular cheese pizzas, but some wanted to experiment with crab and the chef’s happily agreed. It was a great experience as a couple as we learned what each other liked and disliked, and helped to make us closer.

I took the nutrition class; it was very fun and informative. i have zero cooking experience and i went solo so it was intimidating at first, but it was done in a very relaxed atmosphere. Chef Olive, his apprentices and Lisa are very warm and friendly. I plan to take the 12 week course after this experience. Keep up the good work!

I got the the French couple’s night cooking as a birthday gift from my husband and had a blast at Kitchen on Fire. I’m not a natural cook. In fact, I’m pretty fearful. My husband is a wonderful cook and I’ve been very fortunate. In the class, I learned to use a knife correctly, crack an egg the right way and poach an egg as well as a number of other things. Chef Olive and Chef Gaby were so encouraging and lovely. They made me want to work harder and now I’m interested in learning more!

I took Kitchen on Fire’s 12-​week cooking class with hopes of learning the fundamentals, and came away with so much more. The instructors here are not only masters of their craft, but they never once made me feel intimidated, overwhelmed or confused. In fact, I was empowered by newfound culinary insight, and overjoyed by the contagious enthusiasm and passion that filled the class, week after week.
There’s so much I could write about my time working with the chefs, preparing (and eating!) the incredible food, and organically learning each sophisticated technique — but ultimately, taking this course was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made in my life. In fact, I’m thinking about doing the whole thing over again!
Whether you’re a total rookie or an experienced home cook, you’ll fall in love with Kitchen on Fire. It’s truly an unforgettable, one-​of-​a-​kind experience. And yes, it’s worth every penny.

Just had the most incredible Valentine’s Night class and dinner. Not only was the meal exquisite, but I learned so much about cooking, technique, and tips than I ever have watching HGTV. Chef Gabby and Beth were overcome incredible instructors… informative, helpful, and FUN!

What an awesome experience! Chef olive is a true professional and an incredible teacher. His wholistic approach to food, ingredients, and preperation teaches students how to capture the natural flavor of ingredients while explaining the benifits of each ingredient to the body. I would have easily paid the price of the couples cooking course for the meal we prepared at an upscale resturant, but having prepaired it ourselves was priceless. Thank you Chef Olive!

I took the 12 week course at the West Berkeley location but decided to write my review here. Its the same team, so it makes sense to do so.
The course was fantastic! There were people of all different experience levels and goals in my group and we all got better and had a lot of fun in the process.
The textbook was a great guide too (I skimmed it after each class, and I’m sure I’ll reread it many times).
I’m definitely going to come back to KoF and I recommend you give it a shot too.

Kitchen on Fire amazed me. I was expecting for my 10 year old son to be able to safely open a can of refried beans, and toast tortillas without burning down the house. Instead, after a couple of hours in the kitchen with master chef Rick Berman, he came into the garden with a tray bearing:
fire roasted chile salsa
fresh guacamole with lemons from our tree
roast chicken, roasted to perfection, Mexican style
tortillas just so — it made me feel I was in Oaxaca — not burnt, but not
American style bland
beans with a kick, but not over the top
rice so fluffy it could float.
My 10 year old son was glowing with pride as he served this to my singing group, all of us totally suprised. Then the real shock: the kitchen was cleaned by him and Rick! Wow. I cannot recommend this service more highly. Absolutely awesome.

Friday night cooking class with Chef Rick. Great way to spend a Friday evening with the family in the kitchen!
The class we attended with the Big Night movie meal. If you haven’t seen the movie you should because it makes preparing this meal even more fun. We had fun, learned a lot. They send you home with the recipes. We are going to prepare the meal again and do it up like they did in the movie.
We thought parking was going to be an ‘issue’ turns out there is plenty of metered parking on adjacent streets. The class started at 6:30p so parking was free as well.
Chef Rick, Chef Chi and apprentices assisted us throughout the process and had most of the ingredients pre-​measured and had the red sauce prepared ahead of time as well.
There were quite a few courses and those were divided amongst the 12 participant’s in the class. However, we got to see most of the other dishes being prepared so we didn’t miss out on much. The Risotto, whole trout, soup and the Olive cake dessert with Brandy glaze were all prepared close enough to our Timpano prep so we could hear and see what was going on with that as well.
I got lucky and helped prepare the Timpano! We all brought wine and just like in the movie were feeling pretty happy by the time we ate.
If you are looking for an enjoyable evening, like to eat and want to learn some good cooking techniques this is the place. The pace was great and the pros very patient with all of us!
My darling kids gave this class as a Christmas present — one of the best GIFTS ever-​learning to make a meal from one of my favorite movies and most of all spending the evening with them!

My girlfriend and I did the «Salads: Fulfilling Summer Meals» class just this past weekend. It’s worth noting that there are tons of classes available and certainly something up just about anyone’s alley — we just tried to select a class with some recipes and cooking skills that we would consistently use.
Anyways, the class was highly enjoyable. Chef Olive is very knowledgeable and made the class fun and informal. The apprentices and entire kitchen staff were very nice and extremely helpful as well. Kitchen on Fire also has a «bring your own beverages» policy which was cool, so you can bring a little vino or beers to enjoy while you’re cooking.
The salads class was pretty neat and exposed me to some new techniques in cooking and salads. In a nutshell: a very fun, educational, and delicious experience and I highly recommend trying it.

Visited for the first time for the «Big Night» themed Italian cooking class with Chef Rick and Chef Olive. At first, we were pretty nervous about our barely-​there cooking abilities for such ambitious-​sounding dishes (risotto, timpano, whole fish, etc). But there’s assistants and recipes at each station in case we had questions, and we found the experience both relaxing and enriching.
Especially loved the cooking/​cutting miscellaneous tips we received from the chefs. Also enjoyed the BYOW tidbit. Kitchen on Fire was an unique and memorable date night experience and I would definitely recommend!

My lovely bf had surprised me by enrolling us in a cooking class back in December and I am so glad he picked French Cuisine. We had a blast and the class was very educational. One of the cool things is you can BYOB, well, wine since we were going to eat French dishes.
We made watercress and leak soup with poached egg, lobster frisee salad with sautéed mushrooms in xeres vinaigrette, beef wellington with madeira wine sauce, potato duchesse, salmon en croute with sauce meurett and last but not least Frangelico crème brulee with champagne honey marinated strawberries. After watching master chef but the juniors additional, I was totally excited that we were going to make beef wellington. We forgot to sear the steak first but one if the instructor saved the day by using a blow torch the finished product.
We met another couple who had taken the pizza making class and totally loved it and recommend we should take it. I think that would be our next date night plan.

It’s really saying something that I am currently taking the 12 week series for the SECOND time (after a five year interval). And, yeah, it’s not cheap — but you do indeed get what you pay for. My cooking has gone from ‘meh’ to ‘good’ to ‘NICE!’ over the years. I now feel confident that I can cook with any ingredient that comes my way, as long as I can figure out what type of flavor it has and more or less how much water it contains. The chefs are great and give a lot of feedback and coaching. And, importantly, they funny as all get out (particularly Chef Olive), and will teach you about nutrition and tricks of the trade.
Can’t boil water? Kitchen on Fire will turn you into the master chef in your own kitchen!

My husband and I just returned from an evening of Spanish tapas with Chef Olive and about 18 other people… who started out strangers but ended up being a terrific group of people to create with. We had a BLAST.
Chef Olive spent about 20 – 25 minutes going over the six dishes we were going to make, giving us some tips and tricks on prep before setting us loose. It wasn’t the most structured of prep and cooking processes, but that meant you had to just jump in at a table set up for any dish and dive in — and had the chance to move around and try your hand at different things in the prep and cooking process. Chef Olive was everywhere at once, answering questions and helping everyone at the level they needed. This is NOT the class for people who have no idea how to cook; a basic knowledge of prep and cooking is required, given the rapid pace of it all. But if you can cook a basic meal, you can keep up.
Chef Olive made the evening really fun and high energy — and was really inspiring because of his commitment to the larger community. His work with St. Vincent de Paul and low income families (showing them how to use as little as $ 50 a week to feed a family with healthy food — hands on, from shopping with them to cooking with them) has inspired my husband and I to pursue volunteer work in the same vein. How often do you get to learn new techniques and terrific new recipes, make new friends, taste incredible food that you actually helped make, AND come out inspired to do good in the world?
We will be back — and we’ll bring friends with us so they can get all that goodness too!

This Kitchen’s on Fire!!! (Okay, I could not resist paraphrasing Alicia Keys.)
A Berkeley City College student told me about a free six-​week cooking class being offered at Kitchen on Fire (and I guess they needed more people in the class). It was free of charge. Free, me like free. It was part of a special program of teaching people how to cook. (I forgot how this program works, it was some special arrangement with one of BCC’s educational programs.)
Kitchen on Fire is located near Berkeley’s famous The Cheeseboard/​Famous for cheese and pizza (the pizza of the day). The founders are Mike C. and Oliver Said (of Cesar Restaurant) aka Chef Olive, and their slogan is, «If these two clowns can cook, so can you!» I got there early and explored. I was quite surprised, the facilities are the kind one sees on either Food Network or on PBS. Nice and red coloured interiors. .. Ma Mere said that food looks better in red.
More information:
There is a ton of humour on their website.
When the program began and I saw who are instructors were, Chef Olive and an assistant chef, whose name I forgot, I had to ask, «Are these the two clowns who are going to teach us how to cook?!» My fellow classmates looked at me as if I had made a snarky, snide remark. Chef Olive said that they were the clowns who would teach us how to cook. (He knew I had already done my research on KOF.) It was six weeks of fun cooking except Chef Olive would not let me record his lectures. I wanted to because he was so funny and made moi laugh. He was also working on a book, heck, he could have used those recordings to recall what he told the class. Unless he is the type who could not tolerate the sound of his own voice…
We had the pleasure of meeting Mike C., who hosts his own cooking show. He is just as funny and a barrel of laughs just like Chef Olive.
We made many kinds of food: principal courses such as vegetarian burritos, roast chicken, spaghetti, tortas, salads, stews, etc. We had a notebook/​cookbook that was required for the six classes. Chef Olive and Co. would do a demonstration and then we would do the cooking. I went around and back and forth between doing prep work and cooking. There were times I had to encourage my classmates to utilize their elbow grease in stirring the pot.
We went grocery shopping at Berkeley Bowl West. The best part was being given a shopping bag of organic produce and food ingredients to recreate at home after every class. .. the bag had to be reused though, so we had to bring the bags back to get our groceries from class.
I do not know if this particular program is still going on at Kitchen on Fire. I would love to take more classes with them. I hear they offer many kinds of classes. I do not know if they still offer the baking class and the cupcake class. That would be totally cool to take, the cupcake class which emphasizes decorating. That would be a cool class to do at Kitchen on Fire.. . perpetually on fire and hot!
Fresh Review #8 of 100 Unilocal!for 2013.