Flavour Session

Open Cooking Studio for Food Technology and Home Economics Teachers

Try it yourself first.

You spend all year teaching other people to cook. Come and be the one who gets taught.

We are opening one of our kitchen studios for an afternoon of professional development that is mostly just cooking — for secondary Food Technology and Home Economics teachers. No slides, no marking, no twenty-eight students asking where the tea towels are.

What you'll experience

Ninety minutes on Asian flavour principles: how salt, sour, sweet, bitter and umami push against each other across Vietnamese, Thai, Japanese and Korean cooking. Not a demonstration — you cook it, taste it, and get it wrong a few times, which is how anyone actually learns balance.

Then we sit down and eat what we made, and talk shop with other food teachers. Lesson time, equipment, budgets, dietary requirements, the class where nothing worked. All of it.

You will leave with

• A practical Asian flavour framework you can teach from
• Techniques that survive a big class and not enough burners
• Ideas for teaching balance and food culture rather than just recipes
• Curriculum alignment and risk assessment documentation, already written, if you are considering a 2027 excursion
• An afternoon of cooking that was yours rather than your students'

Why come

Because professional development in the practical side of the subject is genuinely hard to find.

And because it is hard to meet other people who understand the same term you are having — the lesson time, the equipment, the budget, the dietary requirements, the student who will not touch anything green. Most of you are the only one in your faculty.

Cook. Connect. Plan a food experience that works.

Cook, and be the student for once. Connect with Food Technology and Home Economics teachers from other schools. And leave with something that works in your classroom, not just in ours.

About excursions

If you are planning one for next year, you will see exactly how a school program runs, and we will hand you the paperwork already prepared so you are not doing that part yourself.

But that is the last twenty minutes, not the reason to come. The afternoon is yours.

School programs at Otao Kitchen

Hands-on cooking programs for students aged 10+ and over, through to tertiary across more than 14 cuisines, for groups of up to 40 in one studio, or up to 80 across both, three kilometres from the city. Schools can choose a standalone cooking excursion, a Melbourne market and food culture tour, or the two combined.

Our facilitators hold current Working with Children Clearances, and our Child Safety Policy, risk assessment and Certificate of Currency are available to schools on request.

Getting here

Otao Kitchen, 393 Victoria Street, Abbotsford VIC 3067

Trams 109 and 12 stop nearby and North Richmond station is about seven minutes' walk. Both kitchen studios are at street level. Tell us about any dietary requirements when you book.

Cooking in Melbourne since 2014. Gold for Excellence in Food Tourism at the Victorian Tourism Awards, 2022 and 2023.

Reserve your place

Free for practising Food Technology and Home Economics teachers. Places are limited and reserved for teachers, so please register with your name, school and faculty.

hello@otaokitchen.com.au