There is a Burmese restaurant in Silver Spring, Maryland that I used to walk to from my office whenever I could justify the expense. They didn't have a lunch menu, so eating there meant paying dinner prices in the middle of the day. I did it anyway, because of a spicy tomato and onion beef curry with cilantro that I could not stop thinking about between visits.

When I changed jobs and lost proximity to that restaurant, I was genuinely bereft. Not dramatically. But genuinely.

A few years later, I found myself with an opportunity to visit Myanmar. Near Inle Lake, I signed up for a cooking class. They asked in advance what I wanted to learn. I did what any reasonable person would do: I sent them the menu of that Silver Spring restaurant and pointed to my dish.

They wrote back to say it was a different dialect of Burmese cuisine but that they thought they could figure it out.

And that they did!

That is, in a single story, why I take cooking classes when I travel. I still cook it at home several times a year nearly a decade later and more than 2,000 miles from the restaurant I first discovered it.

I have lost count of how many I have taken over the years. A handful in Thailand, a few in Vietnam, once in Athens, once in Taormina learning to make proper Sicilian cannoli. A month-long trip across Asia where I made a rule: one class per country, no exceptions. Five days at a cooking school in Évora, Portugal, a birthday gift from my parents that remains one of the best weeks I can remember. Chef Alessandro in Rome, who never just showed me what to do but always explained why, which is the part that actually stays with you.

Cooking classes are not about becoming a chef. The point is that food is one of the most direct expressions of culture that exists, and learning to make something the way locals make it pulls back a curtain that restaurant dining, however excellent, never quite opens. The techniques follow you home. The why behind a dish travels better than the recipe itself. And once you understand the logic of how a cuisine is built, you find yourself reaching for those ideas in your own kitchen in ways that have nothing to do with the original context.

That is where the real creativity lives.

A few practical notes. Seek out small, personal settings over large tourist operations. If you can submit preferences in advance, do it. Most teachers are delighted when a student arrives with genuine curiosity. And if a multi-day format is available, take it. A few hours is worthwhile. A few days is transformative.

The beef curry was excellent, for what it's worth. Not identical to the Silver Spring version. But close enough to feel like a reunion, and different enough to teach me something new.

That is exactly what I am always looking for when I travel.

What's the most memorable thing you've learned to cook away from home, in a class or otherwise?