Imagine you’re traveling in Italy and you learn how to prepare a home-cooked meal right in a local Italian’s kitchen.
Once the meal is done, you’ll enjoy it along with your host, perhaps with some local wine.
Or, imagine that a local guide takes you on a food and market tour in the Italian city you’re visiting. You learn directly about the area’s specialties and get to try a few of them.
Those experiences are exactly what you’ll get from Cesarine (chay-sa-ri-nay), a Bologna, Italy-based company that began in 2004.
The company began small but now has more than 1,500 home cooks and culinary hosts across more than 700 towns, says Maria Rita Tattini, Cesarine’s communications advisor.
In 2025, Cesarine welcomed more than 50,000 guests to connect with its hosts.
Cesarine also recently began to offer experiences with local food producers, such as wineries, olive oil estates, and family farms.
“Cooking classes are among our most popular experiences, particularly fresh-pasta classes. But dining experiences are equally important because they offer something that is difficult to reproduce in a restaurant: the feeling of being invited into someone’s home,” Tattini says.
Cesarine: How It Works
Hungry yet? Here’s how Cesarine works.
Go to its website, and type in the name of the city where you will be in Italy. Next, choose a date. Cesarine’s website will show you a variety of options.
Because of our recent Sicily travels, we typed in “Catania, Sicily,” and chose a date. Here’s just a smattering of the choices offered on or close to our chosen date:
–Artisanal pasta the way it was formerly made
–Cooking class: Dreamy Sicilian arancine (rice balls)
–Sicilian cooking class with Cesarina Fernanda
–Catania fish market tour: A unique experience
Next, we typed in Modena, a town in Emilia-Romagna famous for its balsamic vinegar. Here are just a few options we got:
–Traditional cooking course with organic ingredients
–The art of homemade lasagna: An authentic experience
–Fresh pasta cooking class
–Culinary traditions of Modena: The secret of the tigelle
Choose your option(s) (personally, we’d like to sign up for all of them), pick a date and number of guests, and note any special requests, such as food allergies.
The listing will tell you the price. Prices vary, but most we saw were around 100 Euros. Then complete the sign-up process.
While on a particular listing, you can read reviews for the specific tour or experience you chose.
One thing to consider: The food experience you get in one part of Italy may be totally different than what you’d experience in another region. That’s because local dishes vary so much across the country, Tattini says.
What Makes Cesarine Different
Food tourism in Italy is a big draw for the country, but there are some things that make Cesarine unique.
“I think travelers are increasingly looking for something beyond sightseeing,” Tattini says. “They don’t just want to see Italy. They want to understand how Italians actually live. Food is an extraordinary gateway to that.”
A cooking class with a Cesarina (local host) can reveal something about both the region and also a family recipe or why a particular dish is associated with a holiday or celebration, she explains.
“There’s something very appealing about the idea of being welcomed into a real Italian home. It feels personal and spontaneous rather than a conventional tourist attraction,” Tattini says.
Another thing that distinguishes Cesarine: Since 2019, it’s been designated as a Slow Food Community, which refers to a group that helps to protect and promote local food.
Cesarine’s New Cookbook
Cesarine recently compiled The Cesarine’s Cookbook, a digital collection of authentic family recipes and information from its community of home cooks.
The idea sparked because many Italian recipes have been passed from grandmother to mother to daughter, ofen with ingredients measured visually and with family secrets that aren’t part of conventional recipes, Tattini says.
The cookbook brings together the recipes and helps preserve a culinary heritage. Because it’s digital, the book can continue to grow.
Here are just a few examples of recipes we found in Cesarine’s Cookbook (and we are now very hungry):
—Rosata Cake of Atlamura (from Apulia)
—Burrata, the cheese with a creamy heart (from Puglia)
How to Enjoy a Cesarine Experience (and Any Food Tourism in Italy)
Italy Dreams asked Tattini for some tips to follow when attending a Cesarine food event. Here’s the scoop:
—Come hungry and curious.
—Don’t be afraid to try something you don’t know. “One of the pleasures of Italian regional cuisine is discovering dishes that you may never have encountered in an Italian restaurant at home,” she says.
—Let Cesarine know of any allergies or dietary restrictions/preferences.
—Don’t worry if you’re a beginning cook. “The point isn’t to produce a perfect restaurant dish. It’s to learn, participate, and have fun,” Tattini says.
—Give yourself plenty of time to enjoy the experience! As we’ve reported before, the beauty of Italy travel is slowing down. That also applies to enjoying a meal.
You can follow similar tips for any food tourism you do throughout the country, Tattini says. Stay open to all of the regional variations, and ask locals what they actually eat.
“Perhaps the biggest mistake is expecting Italian food to mean pasta and pizza everywhere. The real joy is discovering what is different from one region to another,” she explains.
How to Sign Up for a Cesarine Experience
Ready to prepare and enjoy a Cesarine home-cooked experience with a Cesarina or take a market tour with a local?
Just visit their website here.
“You can visit a beautiful Italian city and take photos of its monuments, but sitting at someone’s kitchen table tells you something completely different about that place,” Tattini reminds us all.
Curious to learn more about Italy Dreams and how we can help your Italy journey? Feel free to explore all of the articles on our blog. Then, if you have some Italy travel planning questions, find our contact information here.
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Mangiamo/let’s eat!
Italy Dreams 