Most cookery schools look like somewhere you might perform minor surgery. Stainless steel counters, spotless induction hobs, laminated recipe cards and the general sense that someone might be about to tell you off for holding a knife incorrectly.
Food at 52 is not like that.
Upstairs, where guests arrive, there are chesterfield sofas to sink into rather than perch nervously on, worn rugs underfoot and guitars hanging casually on the wall. It feels more like the living room of a house party than the waiting area of a cookery school.
Downstairs, the kitchen is centred around a long farmhouse table where everyone gathers to prep, cook and eventually eat. Shelves are stacked with jars of spices and ingredients, copper pots and pans hang from hooks, and white-tiled walls frame a space that looks comfortably lived-in rather than clinically designed.
It’s the sort of kitchen you’d hope a friend with very good taste might have. Which, in a way, is exactly what it is.
Food at 52 began life in 2007 when John and Emily Benbow started hosting informal cooking sessions for friends at their home. The name refers to that original address – confusingly, the school itself now sits at number 96 Central Street in Clerkenwell. Apparently, enough people get lost looking for number 52 that the team have considered renaming it entirely.
These days, their daughter Ruby runs many of the classes. She’s friendly but quietly firm in the way good teachers are – relaxed enough to keep a roomful of chatty amateur cooks comfortable, but quick to step in when someone’s knife technique begins to look like a small health hazard.
On the Saturday I visit, the class is devoted to tacos.
I’ll admit I arrived slightly sceptical. Mexican food has long been having a moment in London, with new taquerias opening regularly, yet it’s one of those cuisines that can feel oddly difficult to recreate properly at home. In Mexico, tacos are fundamentally street food: warm tortillas filled with grilled meat, seafood, cheese or vegetables and topped with salsas whose recipes have been passed down through generations. Replicating that simplicity in a restaurant – or a British kitchen – isn’t always straightforward, not least because the ingredients can be hard to track down.
But the first surprise of the evening is how simple the whole thing turns out to be.
The format of the class is straightforward. Around a dozen of us gather around the long table, working in pairs while loosely collaborating with the pair opposite. My friend and I quickly fall into conversation with our neighbours, who’ve been given the class as a birthday present.
Everything begins with a margarita – which we make ourselves – a strong argument for cookery schools everywhere to adopt the same policy.
Then the cooking starts.
Over the next 90 minutes, we work through an impressively large number of components: Baja shrimp tacos topped with mango and chilli salsa and avocado crema, plus tinga de pollo – smoky shredded chicken – served with salsa tatemada and sour cream, with jackfruit offered as a vegetarian alternative.
Along the way, there’s a neat balance between learning new recipes and picking up small techniques. Ruby quietly demonstrates the proper way to hold a knife and dice an onion, rescuing one particularly chaotic chopping attempt from my side of the table, while elsewhere we discover that homemade sour cream takes seconds to make and tastes noticeably fresher than anything bought in a tub.
The highlight, though, is making tortillas. Using masa harina (gluten-free corn flour) and a proper tortilla press, we flatten small balls of dough before cooking them briefly in a hot pan. The press itself has been doing the rounds on social media lately, where influencers have discovered it works just as well for pressing fish or meat thinly for ceviche or carpaccio.
The key detail, we’re told, is greaseproof paper. Without it, the dough sticks instantly and the whole operation turns into a rather sticky mess.
Once cooked, the tortillas are wrapped in a tea towel and placed in a tortillero – a basket designed to keep them warm – until everything else is ready.
Eventually, the table fills with bowls of salsas, fillings and sauces, the warm tortillas stacked in the centre. Everyone builds their tacos however they like, while wine and beers appear – and then disappear – and conversation drifts easily between cooking triumphs, small disasters and what everyone does when they’re not making tortillas on a Saturday afternoon.
It feels less like a class and more like a dinner party where everyone happens to be involved in the cooking. Which, I suspect, is exactly the point.
I came with a friend, but as we ate, we found ourselves discussing other reasons to return – birthdays, perhaps, or even a hen do. With my own wedding looming, the idea of gathering a group of friends around this table, margaritas in hand, suddenly felt like a very good one indeed.
Food at 52 runs a range of cookery classes throughout the week, from tacos and pasta to seafood and bread. For more information or to book, visit foodat52.co.uk
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