A Poros cooking class puts you in a local kitchen to make Greek classics with produce from the island’s market and gardens, then sit down to eat them. Browse more food and culture trips on Greece Tours.
Read on for the classes on sale, the menu, the ingredients, your teachers, the drinks, the week-long course, the daily plan, other food outings and common questions.
What is a Poros cooking class?
A Poros cooking class is a hands-on Greek cooking lesson on the island of Poros, followed by a shared meal of the dishes you made. Local cooks teach family recipes with fresh produce from their own gardens, groves and the town market.
Poros sits in the Saronic Gulf, about 58 km south of Piraeus, and only a narrow channel separates it from Galatas on the Peloponnese. The island’s small size helps the classes: the market, the farms across the channel and the kitchen all lie close together.
Katerina Sakelliou runs cooking workshops under the name Katerina’s Kouzina, based at the Odyssey apartments on Poros. Odyssey Eco Glamping, hosted by mother and daughter Katerina and Dora, adds evening classes with wine or raki tasting. Greeka also lists cookery programmes by a tour operator called Aegean Flavours.
A Poros cooking class mixes cooking with a slice of island life. Guests shop, chop, cook and then sit down to eat together. Our Poros page covers the rest of the island, from its beaches to its ferries.
Which Poros cooking class can you book?
Viator sells two hands-on classes on the island, one that ends with an organic lunch and one that ends with dinner. Katerina’s Kouzina runs half-day workshops and a full Greek Cooking Week, and Odyssey Eco Glamping hosts an evening class with wine or raki tasting.
The two Viator listings share the same hands-on lesson. Only the meal at the end differs: a midday lunch or an evening dinner. Check the start time and meeting point on Viator before you book.
Katerina’s Kouzina offers two Poros cooking class formats. The half-day workshop covers starters, main courses and desserts. Katerina teaches private workshops and groups of up to 10 people. The workshop price includes the class, the ingredients and the drinks.
The Greek Cooking Week is the longer option. It combines a stay on Poros with four cooking workshops and excursions. The full list of what it includes appears further down this page.
Odyssey Eco Glamping hosts the evening version. Mother and daughter Katerina and Dora run a gastronomic evening, from garden to plate, with a tasting of wine or raki. The International Kitchen, a cooking travel firm, also sells a 7-night cooking holiday on the island, with hands-on classes taught by local chefs at their family-owned property.
What do you cook in a Poros cooking class?
A Poros cooking class covers Greek classics such as Greek salad, moussaka and tzatziki, along with kleftiko, gyros, souvlaki and meze. The half-day workshop makes starters, main courses and desserts, using family tricks and both modern and traditional methods.
Katerina’s Kouzina opens its description with three tastes: the freshness of a Greek salad, the smell of moussaka and tzatziki on toasted bread. The workshops teach how to make these dishes the easy way, so guests can cook them again at home for family and friends.
A Poros cooking class goes beyond recipes. Guests learn to bake, cook, roast and grill using the family’s traditional tricks and secrets. The class combines modern and traditional methods, and it includes correct chopping and slicing techniques.
Meat dishes have their own place. The workshop description asks what exactly goes into kleftiko, gyros, souvlaki and meze, and then teaches guests to prepare them in the traditional Greek way. The mood stays friendly and informal throughout a Poros cooking class.
The evening class at Odyssey Eco Glamping adds history to the stove. Guests learn how traditional recipes link back to ancient Greece. They also try a special drink made with local wine and inspired by the Greek gods, before eating the dinner they cooked.
Katerina welcomes requests. She says she is open to suggestions if guests want to learn something in particular. A group that wants a certain dish can ask for it when booking a Poros cooking class.
Where do the ingredients for a Poros cooking class come from?
The fish comes from the market in Poros town, and the vegetables come from Katerina’s olive farm on the Peloponnese, across the channel. Guests help harvest tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and basil there.
The market trip starts in Poros town. Katerina describes pastel houses spread across the hillside and yachts the size of palaces floating next to fishing boats. The group buys fresh fish here for the day’s recipes.
The vegetables need a short boat ride. The group crosses the narrow strip of sea to the Peloponnese and visits Katerina’s olive farm. There they harvest tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes and basil, grown under the Mediterranean sun.
The eco farm follows the same idea. Odyssey Eco Glamping keeps an organic grove of olive, lemon and orange trees, with a vegetable garden of tomatoes, okra and greens. Its evening Poros cooking class uses fresh, local, organic ingredients from garden to plate.
Herbs complete the picture. The International Kitchen notes that thyme, rosemary and oregano grow all over Greece, and that guests on its Poros course can collect and use them. The course also uses olive oil from the hosts’ own olive grove.
Who teaches a Poros cooking class?
Katerina Sakelliou teaches the workshops at Katerina’s Kouzina. She specialises in modern and traditional Greek cooking and has nearly 10 years of experience teaching cooking classes in the Netherlands. At the eco farm, mother and daughter Katerina and Dora host the evening class.
Katerina is a passionate cook with an interest in the history of dishes. She knows the origins of a wide range of traditional Greek recipes. Her workshops mix the family’s own methods with modern techniques.
She splits her year between two countries. Katerina lives part of the year in the Netherlands with her family, where she has taught cooking for nearly a decade. The rest of the year she cooks and teaches on Poros, at the Odyssey apartments and bistro.
The evening class has two hosts. Odyssey Eco Glamping describes Katerina and Dora as a mother and daughter for whom hosting is in the blood, and says there is nothing they cannot cook. They guide guests through each dish from scratch on a Poros cooking class at the farm.
The setting adds to every Poros cooking class. After the cooking, the group eats together in the Odyssey bistro, surrounded by bougainvillea, geraniums and herbs in pots. Greek music plays in the background, and the meal goes on under the stars.
What do you drink on a Poros cooking class?
The evening class includes a tasting of 3 local wines or ouzos, plus a special drink made with local wine. The Katerina’s Kouzina workshops include drinks in the price, and the cooking school pours its own wines and ouzo with the food.
Wine and spirits are part of the meal. Visit Poros describes the cooking school as a place to sample its wines, its ouzo and a modern twist on organic local products. The half-day workshop price includes the drinks, along with the class and the ingredients.
The evening class goes further. Guests at Odyssey Eco Glamping sample 3 different local wines or ouzos with dinner. They also try a special drink made from local wine and inspired by the Greek gods, as part of the link between recipes and ancient Greece.
The same hosts run a separate wine evening. Their “Wine Odyssey” explains that the ancient Greeks mixed wine with water, commonly one part wine to three parts water. Unmixed wine was seen as barbaric. The Greeks also aged wine in buried jars sealed with plaster and resin.
The wine trip then visits a modern boutique winery among vineyards. Guests see the stages of wine-making, from bottling to ageing in the cellar, and taste a range of wines with local delicacies. It pairs well with a Poros cooking class on another evening.
What does the Greek Cooking Week on Poros include?
The Greek Cooking Week includes 7 nights at the Odyssey Centre with breakfast, 4 cooking workshops followed by dinner, 3 more dinners, 6 lunches, 2 guided tours and a guided trip to Hydra. Guests also take home a recipe book and an apron.
This is the longest Poros cooking class format. Katerina’s Kouzina lists its contents in full:
- 7 nights at the Odyssey Centre, with breakfast every day
- 4 Greek cooking workshops, each followed by dinner
- 3 more dinners at the Odyssey’s Corner bistro or local tavernas
- 6 lunches, in the restaurant, on site or as a picnic
- 2 guided tours, which change with the month
- 1 guided trip to the island of Hydra
Transfers can come with the week. A taxi meets guests at Athens airport and drives them to Poros, and at the end a taxi takes them to the hydrofoil or ferry. Katerina’s Kouzina sets arrival times between 10:30 and 18:30 for the included transfer, and asks for the flight number a week ahead.
The International Kitchen sells a similar 7-night cooking holiday on Poros. Its programme includes hands-on classes with local chefs at their family-owned property, fresh herbs from the garden, olive oil from the hosts’ own grove and visits to Greek markets.
What happens on each day of a Poros cooking class week?
The Greek Cooking Week runs from Saturday to Saturday. Classes fall on Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, Tuesday goes to Hydra, and Friday stays free for the beach, the island or the Peloponnese.
Saturday is the arrival day. Katerina welcomes guests, and the afternoon stays free for a swim near Askeli. On Sunday the group talks through the menus of the week, and the first class starts at 14:30 with a short tour of the kitchen and the herb garden. Around 17:00 the group returns for an aperitif and finishes the dinner.
Monday starts with a historical walk through the alleys of Poros town and past the fish market in the port. The fish the group picks there goes into the second class that afternoon. It is grilled on the barbecue, baked in the oven or fried in olive oil from the family grove.
Wednesday follows the season, with visits to pick local vegetables and herbs and a class in the cooking studio or on location. On Thursday the group visits the lemon and olive grove for a picnic lunch. That evening brings the final lesson of the Poros cooking class week, a traditional Greek meal under the summer night sky.
Which other food experiences pair with a Poros cooking class?
Odyssey Eco Glamping runs a weekly barbecue night with Greek dancing, a 2-hour tour of its organic farm with a harvest salad, a wine evening and a sunset picnic across the water in Galatas.
The barbecue night runs every Wednesday at the glamping site. The menu has grilled local vegetables, meat and fish, with wine from the site’s cellar. The evening turns into Greek dancing, and guests can add a dance class with a teacher.
The farm tour lasts 2 hours. A guide walks guests through the organic olive, lemon and orange trees and the vegetable garden, and explains how the farm keeps its soil healthy. Guests pick fresh herbs, then eat a salad made from the day’s harvest with a glass of local wine or a soft drink.
The sunset picnic is a private outing for two. A local boat carries two guests from Poros to the shore at Galatas as the sun goes down. A private picnic waits there with a chilled bottle of Prosecco. It makes a quiet end to a day that began with a Poros cooking class.
Odyssey also leads a gastronomy walking tour of Poros town with a local guide, a good start before a Poros cooking class. It begins at the home of a young local couple, the Vlahos family, with homemade lemonade and an almond cookie called amygdalota. The lemonade comes from the island’s own lemon forest, the lemonodasos. The walk also joins the volta, the stroll townsfolk take along the shore at sundown.
What do travellers ask about a Poros cooking class?
How long is a Poros cooking class?
The Katerina’s Kouzina workshop lasts half a day. The Greek Cooking Week runs for 7 nights with 4 workshops.
Can you book a private Poros cooking class?
Yes. Katerina teaches private workshops as well as groups of up to 10 people.
Are drinks included in a Poros cooking class?
Yes. The half-day workshop includes drinks, and the evening class at Odyssey Eco Glamping includes a tasting of 3 local wines or ouzos.
Do you eat what you cook?
Yes. Guests eat the dishes they made, at the Odyssey bistro or, on the evening class, as a dinner at the eco farm.
When does a Poros cooking class week run?
The International Kitchen runs its week from Saturday to Saturday, any week from mid-March to November.
How do you reach a Poros cooking class?
Fast ferries sail from Piraeus to Poros town. The International Kitchen’s arrival transfer instead drives guests by car to Galatas for the short ferry ride across the channel.