Cinque Terre’s Secret Cooking Class: Pesto and Gnocchi In A Hidden Vineyard Home

So there’s this cooking experience tucked on the side of a hilly vineyard high above Riomaggiore in Cinque Terre.

Once a day, a local Italian couple opens up their hidden stone cottage home and kitchen to a few people, where together you take part in a quintessential Italian past time of preparing a meal from scratch using only local ingredients and fresh herbs from their garden.

I seriously contemplated gate-keeping this one, but like everything good, I’m sure this hidden gem will be found at some point. I’m just hoping that I can share about it in a meaningful and respectful way, so that when I return to Cinque Terre, Barbara and Stefano will still be there to welcome me with the same warmth and enthusiasm as the first time.

Exploring Beyond The Village Of Riomaggiore

For four peaceful hours on a crisp October morning, my partner and I enjoyed slow conversation and sipped on local wines with the globe-trotting couple in their Cinque Terre home that they inhabit for half the year during the fair weather months. The other half they spend in Thailand and elsewhere chasing the sun. We are kindred spirits in this way.

To be clear, this was still going to be a cooking class, but not a typical one with workstations and a script. This was more like stepping into someone’ kitchen and being show how they actually cook.

While the harbor and village of Riomaggiore has its charm, most visitors will not even know this place exists above the village nor have hiked the same steps that brought us here.

Arriving Was Half The Adventure

Even getting to the somewhat remote location was an adventure on its own. As soon as we got off the train from La Spezia, we were on a video call with Barbara so she could show us exactly where to go. Barbara tells us that ‘Google shows the wrong way to her house,’ even though it looked pretty straightforward to me.

She’d give us one set of instructions and tell us to call her back when we got to a checkpoint. We repeated this hilarious process until we arrive at an easily overlooked turn-off on the side of the road.

Unbeknownst to us, we had a pretty hearty climb up some steps along a backroad donkey path up the mountain.

At the end of our impromptu hike, I see Stefano with a big smile and a friendly wave.

“Don’t worry, they are friendly,” he shouts down as their two big dogs run down the last few steps to greet us. “Welcome!”

Note: Don’t worry about the hike. There’s a much less strenuous and quicker option of taking a taxi from the village that Barbara can help arrange for you.

Cooking In A Local Home

The view from their outdoor terrace was breathtaking beyond just the exertion it took to get here. There was a serene quiet from up here that we hadn’t experienced once across all the lively Italian cities we had recently passed through.

Renovating this place has taken place across decades of their lives. Just the paperwork and permits took over decades because Cinque Terre is a World Heritage site. Even construction was slow as almost all the materials came from the mountain itself or had to be trucked up to the neighboring hill and flown over by helicopter.

It’s one of a kind and every design element, decor piece, or framed art feels personal and lived-in.

The kind of place I’d one day like to have for my own.

This was actually my second experience cooking with a local in Italy, both booked through Cesarine, each home different and I appreciate how both hosts approach the concept differently. You can read more about it below.

Only The Best Local Ingredients

Our class would be an education in how to make Genovese pesto by hand with a mortar and pestle. This would be paired with gnocchi also made from scratch, a variety of bruschetta and salads, and of course tiramisu and plenty of wine.

Recipes are sacred in Italy, and while there are slight variations by region, what’s agreed upon by all is that you want to use the best local ingredients.

For her pesto, Barbara uses highly prized Ligurian pine nuts and Aglio (garlic) di Vessalico, both from the local coastal area, as well as fresh basil from her garden. It’s finished with sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, also sourced locally, and a mix of parmigiano reggiano and pecorino cheese.

7 ingredients. That’s it.

The gnocchi uses even less. Boiled red potatoes, 00 flour, potato starch, an egg, sea salt, and some nutmeg.

Put Your Back Into It

The pesto is made with a traditional mortar and pestle to break and mash the pine nuts, garlic, and basil. We pinch from the top of the bunch to get the medium to large leaves for the more robust flavor, but also to also the branches to grow back. We also harvest some of the smaller ones too because they tend to be more tender and less bitter.

Mashing the ingredients requires some elbow grease and Barbara was not shy about letting us know our efforts were lacking. Words of encouragement are nice, but I prefer to learn how to do things right instead of being having bad or incorrect habits enabled.

Despite the Italian hand gestures, her calling us out was done in good spirits and always with a smile.

The same went with folding in the potatoes and flour and working it together to form the dough. Standing across us, she guided with instructions and the occasional hands-on demonstration to show just how much pressure we should be using.

It was when we started to roll the dough out into a long stick and cut them into bite-sized pieces that we could really feel the fluffy and airy texture. Different enough from my attempts in the past and night and day compared with store bought gnocchi.

A Taste of Italy

While Barbara focused on the gnocchi and pesto, Stefano was preparing the salads that would be used for the bruschetta. This part was more a demonstration as we were already busy with the pesto making, but he walked us through all the steps and ingredients.

In total, he prepared five different bruschetta toppings using the freshly made tomato and onion salad, roasted peppers, roasted eggplants with parmesan, warm brie and honey, and pesto with a creamy strachiatella.

For our main dish, the now boiled gnocchi was heated up with a healthy pour of olive oil and tossed with a combination of our pesto and Stefano’s salad. To finish, Barbara showed us a variation of tiramisu with the mascarpone cream combined with crumbled sfogliatine.

One of the things I loved most was that Barbara wasn’t teaching any kind of ‘official’ recipes. She was opinionated. This was her way, and arguably, the best way. I’d read that in Liguria, they don’t use eggs in their pasta. There was definitely an egg in Barbara’s gnocchi.

And refreshingly, that’s part of the magic. In Italy, recipes aren’t set in stone – they’re inherited, argued over, refined, and most importantly, enjoyed.

We sat down together with a freshly opened bottle of local white wine and slowly did just that – enjoyed.

The kind of slow that Mediterranean life and meals are built around.

There was no rush in get us out despite running well past what we thought would be the end time. In fact, we reluctantly had to insist on leaving so we can get to our afternoon boat trip around Riomaggiore. Another one we can recommend.

Barbara and Stefano told us to come back, and it felt like a genuine invitation.

Cesarina Barbara

We found this experience through Cesarine, a platform and community of home based cooks offering cooking and culinary experiences from their homes. Barbara is one of their 1500 ‘Cesarinas’ scattered all across Italy. Each carefully vetted to ensure the ‘class,’ their home and kitchen met a certain quality of standard across the board.

I’ve taken a few cooking classes in Italy, and I wished I knew about Cesarine sooner. Only two days earlier, I had my first Cesarine home experience in Bologna with Cesarina Cristina and her husband Enrico. The fact that Cristina had just become a new grandmother the day before allowed me to check off “cooking with an Italian nonna” from my bucket list.

In many ways, experiences like really do feel like the closest thing to cooking with an Italian Nonna – except your nonna may insist her pesto is the only pesto.

Booking Information

If you’re considering booking one, I wrote an in-depth Cesarine review based on cooking with locals in Bologna and Cinque Terre, showing how these experiences differ from your average cooking classes in Italy.

I’ve only done two of these experiences so I can’t speak to the quality of the other classes in different locations, but both exceeded my expectations and were highlights of my time in Italy. My recommendation is to browse and look for locations and homes that you would like to visit, as much as the actual class themselves. Many of these cesarinas offer different workshops, so there should be plenty of options.

You can check out all of Barbara’s other options here.

Classes typically run around 3 hours, but there’s an express option if you’re short on time.

I find that prices range between $100 – $200 depending on the experience, but feels like a bargain for what you get.

Final Thoughts

One of my first thought after leaving Barbara and Stefano’s home was how an experience like this can be ruined when guests treat someone’s home like an afterthought rather than a place they’ve been invited into. While the whole thing is a bookable offering, at the end of the day, it’s still two people opening up their actual home and allowing you to join them for a part of their day.

It’s as much a cultural exchange experience for them to host people from around the world as it is for us to be there. Our experience was all the more special because it was a back and forth sharing of stories and knowledge.

It’s not just some cooking school with a large workspace and a schedule of classes. If you are a large group that just wants to be there for the photos, day drinking, and to be waited on, this is probably not for you. There are plenty of other options for that. Otherwise, come with an open mind, an abundance of respect for their space, and also be ready to eat.

Updated on April 24, 2026