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The National
22-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
Cooking classes for children this summer: Homemade tacos, Asian fusion and more
If your children are done bouncing at the trampoline park, have bickered for hours over the PlayStation, are bored of the pool and can't face another round of Monopoly, it's time to let them get creative in the kitchen with these cooking classes they'll love. Mamalu Kitchen, Dubai The Mini Chef cooking classes at this Nakheel Mall cooking school are geared towards teaching children culinary skills as they create the foods they love. Already this summer, little ones have created pasta from scratch to whip up creamy chicken and mushroom alfredo rolls, cooked mini pizza muffins and tried their hand at Italian chocolate cream buns. Summer camp runs throughout July and August, with a mix of sweet and savoury dishes. The team also run Mini Chef – Snack Heroes classes, in which children can learn to make bites such as mini pulled chicken tacos with homemade taco shells from scratch. Summer camp: Monday-Friday; 10am-12.30pm; Dh1,000 per person per week inclusive of ingredients; Mini Chef – Snack Heroes: days vary; 4pm-5.30pm; Dh200 per person; Nakheel Mall, Palm Jumeirah Dubai; 052 747 9512 Ecole Ducasse Abu Dhabi Studio Children are invited to embark on a culinary journey with classes tailored for different age groups. The Summer Beginner Kids Camp is for children aged six to 10 to build their confidence in the kitchen while making an array of colourful and creative dishes with new recipes each week. The Summer Advanced Kids Camp, for older children from 11 to 17, offers the chance to try more complex dishes from savoury to pastry. There is also the option of the 4 Hands Pastry Session for parents and children, aged six to 12, to come together and create something delicious. Summer Beginner Kids Camp and Summer Advanced Kids Camp: June 30 to August 21; 1.30pm-3.30pm; Dh1,050 per person; 4 Hands Pastry Session: July 25 and August 2; 2pm-4pm; Dh630 for two; Cultural Foundation, Al Hosn; 052 663 7689 Scafa, Dubai Open to children aged seven to 14, summer camp at the School of Culinary and Finishing Arts focuses on teaching young ones the basics so they can use their skills at home. The course teaches the foundations of cooking, baking, pastry and world cuisines including Mexican, Asian and Italian, along with kitchen safety, best use of equipment and – parents rejoice! – how to effectively clean up afterwards. Sessions focus on breakfasts, cold and warm desserts, main courses and starters. Classes are available to buy in packages of one, five, 10 or 15 sessions. Daily throughout July and August; 2.30pm-5.30pm; between Dh290 (one class) and Dh3,480 (15 classes); Cluster I, Jumeirah Lakes Towers, Dubai; 052 110 0232 Top Chef Cooking Studio, Dubai The studio caters to young children and teens via its Kids Cooking Camp and Teens Cooking Camp this summer. From Monday to Friday, little ones aged six to 12 can don an apron and get stuck into making dishes such as dynamite shrimp, breaded seabass, vegetarian empanadas and mini pizzas. They also get to create inventive soft drinks, as well as desserts such as lemon cheesecake, cake pops, mango sticky rice and strawberry tart. Teens aged 13 to 16 are invited to stretch their skills further by whipping up dishes such as three-cheese souffle, beef tenderloin with peppercorn sauce and chicken and mushroom vol-au-vents. Kids Cooking Camp: Monday to Friday; 10am-1pm, Dh250 per session; Teens Cooking Camp: days vary; 2.30pm-5pm; Dh300 per session; Villa 196, Jumeirah Beach Road, Dubai; 04 385 5781 Wagamama, various locations across the UAE Children aged three to 11 not only get to create some of the dishes the Asian fusion chain is famous for – think gyoza and katsu chicken curry – but also get to take home a home chef apron after a hard hour or so in the kitchen. All about 'fun, flavour, and getting hands-on', the sessions invite children to dive into a range of spices and ingredients to cook up their dinner themselves (and take home any leftovers). Dates, timings and prices vary; Mirdif City Centre, Palm Jumeirah, Motorcity and City Walk in Dubai; Abu Dhabi Mall, Reem Mall and Khalifa City in Abu Dhabi Shvili, Abu Dhabi and Dubai The Georgian restaurant with outposts in Abu Dhabi and Dubai runs Kids Masterclass cooking classes throughout the summer and beyond. The hour-long sessions for children aged four and above lets little ones try their hand at a spot of culinary creativity while mum and dad dine at the restaurant. What they make is dependent on the time of day and location of the restaurant, but this summer children have been making Caesar salad, Georgian penovani cheese bread with puff pastry, Georgian cherry pie and jallab, the popular Middle Eastern drink made from date molasses, grape molasses and rose water. Daily; timings vary; free but pre-booking required; Dubai Festival City (052 220 0868), Dubai Hills Mall (052 929 2088), Nakheel Mall, Dubai (058 512 6795); The Galleria Al Maryah Island, Abu Dhabi (052 438 3880), Marina Moon Tower, Abu Dhabi (058 562 5251)
Times
14-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
This Lego-obsessed city is Europe's best break for kids
For once, my daughters are excited about lunch. They've even knowingly ordered a vegetable, unheard of in their respective five and four years on this planet. But then, they've never before been offered lunch by a robot. Nor ordered it by slotting Lego bricks together and pushing them into a machine. This is the magic of Mini Chef, the restaurant at the centre of Lego House in Billund, southern Denmark (child meals £15, adult £26). Here meals are made — so the story goes — by a Lego chef in a chaotic kitchen that we watch on a tableside screen. The food then makes its way down a spiral conveyor belt to a pair of robot waitors, Robert and Roberta. Wearing Lego bowties and fixing us with goggly Lego eyes, Robert and Roberta wave at the waiting children, prompting shrieks and giggles. And there is something for the parents: the menu is heavy on veggies and dishes are tasty (think cauliflower and chickpea curry, and oven-roasted salmon). I've come with my husband and three young children to visit Billund's Lego House, the 'Home of the Brick', a towering building that appears like 21 giant blocks stacked in the city's central square (from £27, under 3s free; Inside are 25 million Lego bricks, some masterfully composed into models ranging from dinosaurs to a giant tree, the others scattered about in four 'experience zones' ready for building. Energy levels have been high all morning ever since we were issued with personal — and scannable – bright yellow wristbands at the entrance to Lego House and told to use them to identify ourselves at the cameras stationed around the numerous activities in the four zones. Cue sprints towards buckets of Lego blocks, determined to get there first, and endless jostling in front of screens to grab the perfect memento of the latest creation. The selfies we take using the cameras are stored in the Lego House system for us to access via the QR code on our wristbands when we get home. • 16 of the best family adventure holidays We start by grabbing a Lego base plate to build brick self-portraits of how we're feeling (excited, obviously) and load them into a machine that scans our creations to generate a digital version on screen, which we then watch dance to electronic music. Then we move on to create a fish, which is also rendered digital but then released into an aquarium to swim with — gulp — a giant Lego shark. Everything is brightly coloured, larger than life, interactive and the girls can't get enough of it all. Their younger brother, who is two, struggles to play along. But then we find the Duplo train builder activity, which engages him in quiet play for long enough that I can take his sisters to the Robo Lab to program a robot. It's simple coding and almost certainly the first they've ever tackled. Still, my four-year-old daughter figures it out before I do and gets her robot to move around the digital garden, planting seeds and watering them to make flowers for the bees, while I jab uselessly at the screen doing all the wrong things. A preview, surely, of our future family dynamics when it comes to tech. I had thought there might not be enough at Lego House to engage us for an entire day. But, in each zone we walk through, we're constantly pulled from one room to the next by more and more enticing builds to try. Hours pass, we take dozens of photos, and I begin to understand why Lego has long been the world's most popular toy. I even lose myself in creating an intricate Lego flower, shaping two shades of yellow into petals and combing through seemingly bottomless buckets of blocks to find exactly the right hinge to attach them. I'm normally far too impatient for this sort of activity, yet I probably spend at least 20 minutes here, my daughters both silently building right beside me. By the time I've finished and am planting my flower in the Lego garden, my shoulders have dropped and my breathing slowed. I feel like I do after a yoga class, minus the sore muscles. Only in Billund. • 18 of the best European city breaks with children There are ten Legoland theme parks worldwide, including the one in Windsor, but Billund is the only one with a Lego House. It was in this small Danish town that the local toymaker Ole Kirk Kristiansen invented the brick and it very much remains its home. A large factory and the company headquarters are here and it feels like a town that Lego built — not least because there are vast Lego blocks to climb on in the street, and every second person you see is either wearing a Lego employee lanyard or carrying a bulging bag of goodies from the Lego shop. You don't visit Billund if you don't love Lego. And, if you do love Lego, you'll almost certainly want to stay in the Legoland hotel. The themed bedrooms run from Arthurian knights to Ninjago ninjas and are decorated with characters built from Lego bricks — we find a ladybird above the bed and a butterfly in the bathroom — and have bunk beds for the kids. It's fun, if a little tired in places, and the castle-themed playground within easy hollering distance of our room is a boon come evening and the need to run off steam before bed. Billund is a compact place and everything we need is walkable from the hotel. With three children who all require car seats, not needing a hire car is a huge relief. I instantly love the pleasant 20-minute walk from the hotel to the town centre, winding along a pedestrianised riverside walkway lined with large modern sculptures. We stroll this route several times during our May half-term break, walking into the town for cinnamon rolls at Billund Bageri, dinner at one of the simple restaurants (pizza is a fixture) or to let the kids loose in the playgrounds on the roof of Lego House. One afternoon we walk in for a preview of the Lego Masters Academy, inspired by the TV series of the same name, which will pit talented Lego builders against each other when it launches in September. On the ground floor of Lego House, it will offer hands-on sessions for Lego fans, teaching building skills from foundation level to the technically advanced, for a separate charge (adults and children £23). This is most likely to appeal to AFOLs, or adult fans of Lego — an impassioned community of Lego-lovers who create incredible custom builds, some of which are on display in the Masterpiece Gallery on the top floor of Lego House — but the sessions also cater for builders from the age of five. This makes my eldest daughter the youngest these sessions are suitable for. She's completely captivated from the get-go and creates something far more intricate than I would have imagined she was capable of, which she insists we display the second we get home. I resolve to challenge her more in future and to leave the box of Lego out in the living room more often. Before leaving Billund, we must, or course, visit actual Legoland (adults and children £37, under 2s free). After all, we can see it from our hotel. This is the original Lego theme park, opened in 1968 as a place to display the company's exhibition of models. Now owned by Merlin, today it's more focused on child-friendly rides. We visit twice to spin on the carousel and giggle ourselves giddy on the Flying Eagle rollercoaster. There are rides even my two-year-old son can enjoy (a Duplo-themed mini train, a safari to see Lego animals) and the girls are cock-a-hoop when they discover that Mummy isn't allowed to accompany them on the Frog Hopper. I strap them in and watch them dissolve into near-hysteria together, whooping each other into the sort of frenzy of jubilation only childhood knows as they're flung up and down a tower like a frog hopping in the air. I find myself grinning and waving non-stop throughout their ride. • 13 of the best family-friendly weekend breaks in the UK Sure, sometimes parenting means standing back and letting your children have all the fun but on this trip, more often than not, I've been giggling and whooping right along with them. The home of Lego? It's a blockbuster hit. Helen Ochyra was a guest of Lego House. The Legoland Hotel has B&B family rooms from £300, including a two-day ticket to Legoland ( Fly to Billund
