Catalan Cuisine Workshop, Perpignan

The Catalan Cuisine Workshop in Perpignan offers a three-hour hands-on cooking experience exploring the distinctive food traditions of French Catalonia — the Roussillon — in the kitchen of a local chef based in Perpignan, the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales department and the northernmost city of Catalan-speaking culture in Occitanie. Perpignan and the surrounding Roussillon plain occupy the far south of Occitanie, bordered by the Pyrenees to the west and the Mediterranean to the east. The region's cuisine reflects Catalan and south-French Mediterranean influences in roughly equal measure, distinct from both Parisian French cooking and from the Languedoc tradition further north. The workshop teaches three dishes central to the Catalan kitchen. The first is pa amb tomàquet — bread rubbed with a cut tomato and dressed with olive oil — the foundational Catalan flavour carrier found on every table from Barcelona to Perpignan and made here with local Roussillon tomatoes and Aspres olive oil. The second dish is escudella, the hearty Catalan meat and vegetable stew thickened with traditional pilota meatballs — a preparation considered the Catalan equivalent of pot-au-feu and still the centrepiece of family meals across the Roussillon. The third preparation is crema catalana, the Catalan custard dessert that predates French crème brûlée by centuries, flavoured here with Roussillon lemon zest and cinnamon rather than vanilla. The workshop takes place in a domestic or semi-professional kitchen in Perpignan's Saint-Jean or Place de la République neighbourhood. The chef explains the cross-border Catalan identity shared between Perpignan and Barcelona and the way Roussillon ingredients — olive oil from the Aspres foothills, seasonal vegetables from the Conflent valley, pork from Catalan black pig breeds — shape the local kitchen. The session concludes with a tasting of Banyuls and Rivesaltes fortified wines, both Pyrénées-Orientales AOC designations grown on steep schist terraces above the southern Mediterranean coast. Groups are limited to eight participants. The €70 price covers all ingredients, the cooking session, the shared meal, and the wine tasting.