Teaching People to Cook at the Gray Goose

Budding chefs can walk out the door of the Gray Goose Cookery in the Olde Mistick Village with a bundle of cooking tools. If you need it in the kitchen, chances are it is in this store. But what happens when you come home with that impeccable even cooking surface pan, or the knife with precision cutting or even a pizza stone? The Gray Goose has the cooking part covered too.

The store has an open kitchen, and cooking classes and demonstrations are offered year round. The cooking classes range in topics and skill level from wine appreciation classes to knife skills to brunch classes.

“We do two to three classes a week,” Dan Price of the Gray Goose Cookery said.

Price is the manager and one of cooking instructors at the Goose. He actually first stated working at the Goose years ago as the cooking instructor.

According to Price the cooking classes began a few years after the store opened. Suzanne Lane opened the Gray Goose Cookery in 1995 and the Gray Goose Too, which sells glassware, tableware, linens, flatware and barware, about a year later.

Lane who also owns Elizabeth & Harriet originally began the Goose after selling some gourmet New England foods at Elizabeth & Harriet and realizing there was a need for a kitchen store in the area. She opened the Gray Goose Too after she needed more retail space for the Gray Goose Cookery, and the cooking classes began about 10 years ago.

“The cooking classes have always been pretty popular,” Price said.

At the Sunday brunch classes, Price said, participants cook a full meal. A recent class included a butternut squash souffle, sausage and roasted root vegetable home friends, cranberry orange fruit salad and mimosas.

“They’re participation classes, you don’t get to just sit and watch,” Price said.

If the full meal brunch class which lasts about 2 hours is a bit daunting other classes include an hour-long knife class where participants learn the basics and make a simple appetizer or wine appreciation classes where participants sample wine and see how it's paired with appetizers and cheeses. Those more basic classes last about an hour.

This winter, Price, said they are planning on adding baking classes with a special yet to be announced chef who has been the head pastry chef at resorts around the world including in Puerto Rico.