French Cooking Class - Celebrating Chandeleur

Chandeleur is a holiday that welcomes the first signs of spring. In France, it is traditionally celebrated by making crêpes, with a variety of superstitious little tricks to bring happiness and prosperity upon your household.

One of those tricks involves holding a coin in your left hand while you flip the crêpe pan with your right hand: if all goes smoothly and you haven't dropped the crêpe or the coin or killed anyone, chances are you're lying. But if you're not, that is a very good omen. Another one is to throw the first crêpe of the batch (which is always a dud anyway) on top of a high cupboard, and leave it there for the rest of the year.

Please join us in a cooking and tasting class where you will learn to make traditional crêpes, drink cider, and enjoy learning from professional French chef, Florence Melin. Florence was born in Paris, France and has been a private chef for 12 years. 

Learn more about Florence, and her 2024 summer gastronomic, the Gourmet Getaway, tour to France below : 

“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” Buddha

This quote has always guided me and taken all its meaning when I started to cook professionally 12 years ago (at age 40) and founded a catering company to bring authentic French cuisine to people in the US.It is called Sucre & Sel which translates to “sugar and salt”. These important  ingredients are all about balancing flavors and “bringing life to food”.

Today I cater private dinners, buffets as well as teaches cooking classes. I frequently travels back to France to visit family and friends and recently furthered my talents with French Cuisine at FERRANDI, a leading culinary school in Europe.I moved to Raleigh in 2017 with my family (my husband and 4 teenagers) and started to develop new relationships in this community. Before moving to North Carolina, I had lived in Minneapolis and Chicago for 17 years. Prior to moving to the US I grew up in Paris and spent most of my summers in a small fishing village on the coast of western Brittany.

As I frequently travel back to France for short visits, I meet many people wishing they could do same.  One day, I got the inspiration that I could help them experience French cuisine and culture in a personalized way.

In 2022, I created “Le Gourmet Getaway”, a guided trip to France with an emphasis on the culture and culinary aspect of my home country. Through this unique adventure I share my love for the places I grew up in and bring people into the heart of French culinary culture, its history and today’s lifestyle.