Chef Kathryn Kelly

To truly experience a destination, Chef Kelly believes you must first taste its food and wine.

In your opinion, what are the benefits of attending a cooking class in the Culinary Arts Kitchen?

 First and foremost, we want our guests to thoroughly enjoy themselves and have fun. Our curriculum is based on three fundamentals:

• Teaching culinary techniques that chefs use every day.
• Building a recipe and skills repertoire that guests can easily transfer to their home kitchens.
• Exploring cuisines, spices, recipes and ingredients from our ports of call.

It's important to note that Regent Seven Seas Cruises has made a significant investment in building a culinary facility that rivals any cooking school on land. With 18 individual stations, the Culinary Arts Kitchen sets the bar as the premier, state-of-the-art culinary school on land or at sea.

In addition to culinary classes, guests can join you and your chefs for Gourmet Explorer Tours. What's unique about these culinary excursions?

I designed each and every Gourmet Explorer Tour for Seven Seas Explorer. Having traveled the world for 40 years as an intrepid gourmet chef, I decided that these tours were a perfect way to share my secret and special places with our guests. For instance, in Rhodes, guests spend the day with a Greek family in their restaurant, while in Barcelona guests go behind-the-scenes of a Michelin-starred restaurant and explore the magic of molecular gastronomy.  I begin the design of each tour with a simple question: "A visit to this port would not be complete without experiencing…"

How do the Gourmet Explorer Tours and the classes at the Culinary Arts Kitchen intersect?

 I am passionate about travel, teaching and learning – and there is no better place where those passions merge than with the Gourmet Explorer Tours and the classes at the Culinary Arts Center aboard Seven Seas Explorer. I can buy fish in Corfu and use them in a Greek cooking class that day. I can take guests to an olive farm in Spain and actually show them how we make extra virgin olive oil. I can introduce our guests to the perfect Bandol rosé, in the garden of a renown French chef -who cooks us lunch from the herbs, vegetables and fruits he harvested as the sun came over the Côte d'Azur.