- April 28, 2024
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Pasta and wine. Travel and food. Lael and Giuliano Hazan. These are all great pairings.
The Hazans, a husband-and-wife duo, pair their passions for food and travel every fall and spring, when they host Cooking with Giuliano Hazan in Valpolicella, Italy, which is in Verona, and Bolgheri, Italy, which is on the coast of Tuscany.
Launched in 2000, the school has been recognized for its quality of instruction and tours by Food and Wine Magazine, Forbes, and TravelChannel.com.
The one-week cooking course is an immersive experience in the Italian lifestyle. After daily tours and excursions, Giuliano teaches a five-hour cooking class demonstrating how to make Italian dishes and pair them with the perfect wines.
The cooking school grew from a merger of the Hazans' professional talents and backgrounds.
In addition to teaching, Giuliano is a bestselling author of cookbooks, including "The Classic Pasta Cookbook," published in 1993 to a glowing review from the New York Times.
Lael is an independent travel agent at Gracious Getaways, which serves Longboat Key and the surrounding areas, although she came to Sarasota in the mid-1990s to work at the Jewish Federation to use her graduate degree in social work and nonprofit service.
About the same time Lael moved to Sarasota, Giuliano moved to the area for the beach atmosphere and easy access to an airport for traveling around the world to teach cooking.
They met at a party in 1995 thrown for their respective apartment complexes and were married in 1997.
“When we got married, I took a different path,” said Lael. “At that time, he was teaching around the world, cooking and writing multiple books. Then we founded the cooking school in Italy.”
Giuliano's passion for cooking was heavily influenced by his mother, Marcella Hazan.
He grew up spending his summers in Italy learning her recipes. At 17, Giuliano started assisting Marcella at her world-renowned School of Classic Italian Cooking.
“She's really the one who brought authentic Italian cooking to the States,” said Giuliano. “When her first book came out in 1973, it was the first one that was really talked about and taught this kind of cooking. She was a very good teacher. So thanks to her, I learned not just how to cook, but how to teach a cooking class, how to put together a course that people would understand Italian cooking.”
Lael explained that while Giuliano handles the cooking, she leads the sight-seeing and tours. The latter half of the business started with people asking for recommendations when they came to the school, said Lael. The more experience she got handling tourism-related situations, the more things fell into place for Gracious Getaways, which she started about six years ago.
“We were getting a lot of requests from students,” said Lael. “‘Where do I stay? I want to be there a few days beforehand. What should I do? Do you have recommendations?’ So I actually became a travel advisor to help them. And now, I've gone through a lot of training. We've been able to grow the business and I have four other associates now.”
Through Gracious Getaways, Lael offers unique trips that are tailored specifically to each client. Over the years, she has grown her connections in many cities.
“Travel broadens the mind,” said Lael. “You learn about different cultures, you get different perspectives on things. We sometimes get so into our bubble, but travel allows us a different way of looking at the world. It's so enriching.”
While at home in Sarasota, Giuliano offers cooking classes at his home for anyone in the area. They are $195 per person. He said it is the perfect experience to add to a vacation when loved ones visit from out of town. The schedule is on GiulianoHazan.com.
“It's really the interaction with people that drives us,” said Giuliano. “We get to meet all different kinds of people, but they all have a commonality that they're interested and passionate about food and wine and travel and culture. We get quite close with some of these people. These are the people who want to travel with us and become clients for Lael.”
