Cooking schools on the hot seat

Food inspectors have put Maricopa County home-based and recreational cooking schools on notice: If you serve food, you’re a restaurant. Maricopa County’s Environmental Services Division, which regulates all eateries, grocery stores, bakeries and the like, say demonstration cooking schools fall into the same permit category as restaurants if students taste food — whether a full plate of osso buco or a teaspoon of chocolate ganache.

Exceptions include "hands-on classes" in which students cook their own food, as well as accredited facilities such as the Scottsdale Culinary Institute and high school home economics classes, said David Ludwig, division manager.

Recreational cooking schools, which have multiplied in recent years with the emergence of the "foodie" demographic and that attract hundreds of students every week, say the new measures could end their businesses or mean financial hardship as they rush to re-equip kitchens to meet restaurant standards.

"They have granted permits for the way we have operated for years, I mean I’ve been open since 1993, so at this point they are changing those requirements," said Martie Sullivan, owner of Sweet Basil Gourmetware and Cooking School in Scottsdale. "The ‘why’ behind that I don’t know. I just don’t know."

A complaint filed in February that a Glendale cooking school was operating as a restaurant without a license triggered the redefinition of the county’s regulation. Investigators checked out the Glendale complaint and, on Sept. 23, issued a "Standard Operating Procedure" that cites which type of cooking schools need restaurant permits.

"I’m going to reiterate again that these are existing rules for eating and drinking, for establishments where food is being served, so they are not new," Ludwig said. But he concedes it is the first time for the term "cooking school" to appear in division documentation.

County inspectors have notified nine cooking schools about the regulations, though that number is likely to increase, said Johnny Diloné, division spokesman.

Some cooking school owners declined to be interviewed, saying they were afraid their compliance requirements would be tougher if they commented. Almost all of those contacted said there has been a lot of confusion about what the new guidelines are and what they will have to do to meet them.

Heather Burton, owner of Plate It Up! in Glendale, who received the first cease and desist order received a list of required upgrades including a $3,000 commercial dishwasher — overkill, she said, for an establishment that has, at the most, 18 students a day.

Shauna Halawith, owner of Kitchen Classics in Phoenix, questioned why a different category of permit couldn’t be created specifically for cooking schools — something that schools could feasibly comply with. "We’re not a restaurant," she said. "We need a different category for cooking instructors."

Barbara Fenzl knows the regulation means the end for Les Gourmettes Cooking School that, for 23 years, has drawn students from across the Valley to her Phoenix home. Fenzl, a lauded chef and cookbook author who has had Julia Child in her kitchen, says her classes are booked through January. Chefs are flying in from all over the country to teach at them. But she has been told she cannot conduct the classes in the same kitchen where she and her family cook their meals.

"They said their intent wasn’t to shut down the school, but my options would be to move out of the house or build a commercial kitchen," she said. "When I started in ’83, I called the health department and said, ‘I’m starting a cooking school, and were there any regulations?’ And they bounced me around to a couple people and they came back with, ‘No, there aren’t any regulations’ — that they would just view it like I was entertaining at home like a dinner party."