Chef Fernanda Souza
From R$ 704.00
A professional chef comes to your kitchen in Jardim Primavera or 25 de Agosto and teaches you the dishes this city actually eats — carne de sol, vatapá, feijoada — with ingredients from the second-largest street market in Brazil.
The Feira de Duque de Caxias stretches 2.5 km along Avenida Presidente Vargas every Sunday — over 2,000 stalls of carne de sol, manteiga de garrafa, feijão de corda, and fresh spices, second only to Caruaru and registered as municipal heritage. A private class can start right there, learning to pick ingredients stall by stall before cooking them at home.
For couples in Caxias, a special night out usually means an hour-plus in traffic to Rio's Zona Sul — and the same slog back. A hands-on cooking class at home flips that: fresh pasta rolled side by side, a chef guiding every step, and a dinner you made yourselves, without ever leaving the neighborhood.
REDUC engineers and technicians live on rotating schedules that no cooking school accommodates. A personal chef teaches when you're actually free — a weekday morning after a night shift, a Tuesday afternoon, a Sunday at the sítio in Xerém. The class adapts to your life, not the other way around.
Tell us your goal: master the Nordestino classics your family grew up on, finally nail a full feijoada, or learn fresh pasta for date nights. Share your skill level — total beginner to confident cook — and the chef builds the lesson around it.
The chef can bring everything ready to cook, or you can book the market option: meet at the Sunday feira on Avenida Presidente Vargas and shop together, learning to judge carne de sol and pick dried shrimp before heading to your kitchen.
This is not a demonstration — you do the work, from knife cuts to seasoning to plating, with the chef correcting technique in real time. Classes run three to four hours in your kitchen in Jardim Primavera, Centro, or anywhere in Caxias.
The class ends at the table, eating the meal you cooked. You keep written recipes calibrated to what you actually did, and the chef leaves your kitchen clean — the only evidence is your new skill.
Duque de Caxias has the second-highest GDP in Rio state and no cooking school culture to match — and chefs from the capital rarely cross Avenida Brasil to teach here. That leaves a private class at home as the only way to get professional instruction in the Baixada, whether you're in a Jardim Primavera condominium with a gourmet balcony or a house with a big kitchen in Parque Lafaiete or Vila São Luís.
The city's food identity is the curriculum. Caxias was built by Northeastern migrants, and its Sunday feira is a living pantry of that heritage: carne de sol, manteiga de garrafa, feijão de corda, fresh beiju. A class built around those ingredients isn't tourist cooking — it's learning to make, properly, the food your neighbors' grandmothers made, with the Mercado Municipal and the new Mercado do Produtor filling in whatever the feira doesn't cover.
For groups, the region offers a format Rio can't: the sítio class. Families and friend groups with country houses in Xerém and Imbariê, up toward the Serra dos Órgãos, book weekend sessions around a wood stove — feijoada or galinha caipira cooked slowly while everyone learns, then a long afternoon lunch with the cachoeira nearby.
Local Tip
Book the Sunday market option at least once: meeting your chef at the Feira de Duque de Caxias and learning to choose carne de sol and dried shrimp stall by stall is half the lesson — and the feira's live forró makes it feel like a party, not a class.
A private class costs a fraction of what Rio cooking schools charge once you add travel time and tolls — and here the chef comes to you, the menu is yours, and you keep the leftovers.
R$90–R$280 per session (2–8 people, 3–4 hours)
Stop watching recipe videos and learn with your hands — a professional chef, your kitchen, and the flavors of the Baixada on the menu.