If you long to own a villa in Italy, but can’t quite afford it, why not make
it earn its keep by hosting cookery courses? A great idea – with clients
willing to shell out upwards of £1,000 for a week to unlock the mysteries of
la cucina – but hardly an original one. A quick internet search shows 96
cooking schools in Tuscany alone – with more than 10 in the Lucca area. In
the tiny village of Vorno, south of that walled city, anyone with a
hankering to learn how to make the perfect melanzane parmigiana has at least
four venues to choose from.
So, is it a brilliant way to make money out of your sunshine hideaway – or a
market saturated to the point of cutthroat competition?
Ask Michael Rhode, 66, who runs cookery courses at his properties in Vorno,
France and Morocco. Rhode was a property developer in London when he started
acquiring overseas bolt holes. “I was already renting them as a sideline,
then I went into it as a business,” he says. “But I was getting only one or
two months a year out of the ski chalet, and four or five from the villas,
so I added cooking for the shoulder months of spring and autumn. It was a
plunge into something totally different.
“I could have done language lessons or painting courses,” he continues, “but
none of that grabbed me. Put people in front of an easel and they don’t talk
to each other. Cooking works best because of the conviviality and bonding.”
In 1997, Rhode opened his first residential courses at Le Mas des Oliviers, in
Théoule-sur-Mer, near Cannes, a six-bedroom house he had bought for £200,000
in 1994 and spent £680,000 doing up. “I had Frédéric Rivière on the payroll,
cooking for the chalet. I’d got so tired of chalet-girl food. Your chef
needs to be French in France and Italian in Italy.”
So, although Rhode has an impeccable foodie heritage – his American father was
editor of Gourmet magazine – it was Rivière, a classically trained French
chef who has worked at a number of Michelin-starred restaurants, who took on
the role of teacher. The Rhode School of Cuisine was born.
Next stop was Vorno, and the Villa Michaela, a magnificent establishment Rhode
had bought and restored in the 1980s. It began to host the Tuscan branch of
the school. Alvaro Maccioni, a native of nearby Vinci and owner of the
long-established London restaurant La Famiglia, wielded the instructional
spatulas there for a few seasons, but the collaboration didn’t last. He
left, though he didn’t go far – he now presides over two cookery
establishments, Villa al Boschiglia and Casa Felice Matteucci in, you
guessed it, Vorno. Rhode’s marriage, meanwhile, broke down in the late
1990s: divorce left the villa in the hands of his ex-wife, Vanessa, who now
rents out the property for £21,600 a week.
In 2000, Rhode – now with wife number three, Terri, 39 – made a temporary
withdrawal from the cooking fields of Tuscany to snap up a four-acre plot in
a smart Marrakesh suburb, La Palmeraie, for £68,000. He spent £1.35m
building two huge houses there. A large demonstration kitchen is a central
feature of eight-bedroom Dar Liqama, where Badr, the chef, unlocks the spicy
secrets of the tagine. “Now I find I could use a demonstration kitchen in
Dar Louisa, which has five bedrooms, as well,” he says.
Rhode’s heart was still in Tuscany, though. Two years later, after a long
search, he found Villa Lucia. He paid £744,000 for the property, which
included the main villa and two smaller companions, Casa Joshua and Casa
Cameron. They were little more than ancient wrecks in an overgrown holly
plantation, but Rhode has spent £2m transforming them into immaculate
residences with antiques in the bedrooms and original murals in the salons.
The walled four-acre mini-estate includes cypress alleys, grottoes and
fountains, a tennis court, two swimming pools and a plunge pool.
So, what has Rhode learnt about the cookery-school business? Perhaps
surprisingly, given the competition, he doesn’t spend much on marketing,
expecting his mainly American clients to find his £1,480-a-week courses
online and via personal recommendation. But he says you need an impeccable
standard of accommodation and service – as well as an inspirational chef –
to command those prices, which means a large decorating budget and staff
costs.
Others in the business concur. Megan James, marketing director of On the Menu
(www.holidayonthemenu.com), a gastro-travel specialist, says that a
successful cookery school needs a properly fitted kitchen big enough to
accommodate a dozen students – the optimum number. The property must also be
“unique, comfortable and luxurious”. Ensuite bedrooms go without saying; a
pool, a hot tub and a fitness suite are the norm. And you won’t get far
without a large terrace from which to enjoy spectacular views – but you
mustn’t be too isolated, either.
Which brings us back to the Vorno estate. Because here’s the thing: in high
summer, when it’s too hot to think about cooking, the school premises become
top-of-the-range rental villas, with a chef on hand to make delicious
dinners and an already-resident army of management, drivers, gardeners and
maids to deal with a high-end holidaymaker’s every whim.
It’s a question of where you want to be in the market, says Rhode: “There’s a
wide difference between your average Tuscan farmhouse and a fully serviced
villa, in terms of luxury and price. It’s the ‘I don’t want to go to a
hotel, but I want hotel services’ market.”
Last week, chef-teacher Fabio Guelfi had the Casa Cameron teaching kitchen
(all three houses have them) to himself as he prepared dinner for a Russian
family in Joshua and a group from New Orleans in Lucia. He kindly showed me
how to make parmesan baskets, a highlight of his courses. The maids bustled
about, smiling and helpful, but strangely impervious to my (I think rather
good) Italian.
That’s because, unlike Guelfi, they are not Italian but Slovakian, as are the
builders converting the stable block into a spa. It’s a clever, and – Rhode
assures me – entirely legal tactic to keep costs down. He employs most of
his staff through a Slovakian company, thereby paying social taxes only on
that country’s minimum wage, £139 per month.“It does make the operational
side possible,” he says. “You need the staff.” He reckons he could be saving
as much as £135,000 a year in this way, although he has noticed that the
numbers on the payroll “appear to have crept up”.
So, with three enviably luxurious properties functioning as established
businesses, between which Michael, Terri and their two young sons divide
their lives, it seems an odd decision to put them all on the market. Yet
that is what Rhode has done, offering a tasty portfolio of Le Mas des
Oliviers at £1.8m, Dar Liqama and Dar Louisa at £3m, and the Lucia complex
at a stonking £10.8m. He says it’s because of his preoccupation with his own
mortality – “It’s a big mistake to die when you’ve got a lot of property” –
and the realistic assessment that he’d better start now, as properties like
these might take a while to shift.
“The agent thought there was a market for a wealthy buyer looking for
first-class property and some income,” he says. “These are up and running,
but I’m continuously trying to upgrade the income level.” Hence the
construction of the new Vorno spa, designed to attract stressed
mini-breakers from Britain. (Pisa airport, with a wide selection of direct
flights from Britain, is a half-hour drive away.)
If he gets the prices he’s asking, Rhode’s profits from the actual properties
will be even more mouthwatering than Guelfi’s white truffle soup. Perhaps
his next move should be to start a new course: how to make serious money in
the overseas property market.
www.rhodeschoolofcuisine.com
The properties are for sale through Aylesford International; 020 7351 2383, www.aylesford.com
Tuscan treasures
A spectacular 15th-century villa in the countryside just outside Florence,
surrounded by olive groves and fruit trees. It has 17 bedrooms, a guesthouse
and two pools. For sale for £15.5m, with Savills; 020 7016 3740, www.savills.com/abroad
In Pelago, a 40-minute drive from Lucca, this six-bedroom 15th-century
farmhouse, set in 9½ acres, was once run by the Vallombrosa monastery. It
has two one-bed flats, two cottages and a pool. For sale for £2.5m, with
Aylesford; 020 7351 2383, www.aylesford.com
Villa Pozzolo, 30 miles from Florence, has 16 bedrooms, a chapel, a pool and
100 acres. The 17th-century property is let, but could be restored as a
private home. For sale for £2.9m, with Savills; 020 7016 3740, www.savills.com/abroad
On a hillside overlooking Lucca, this ancient stone property has been
converted into seven apartments. There are 14 bedrooms and seven reception
rooms. For sale for £666,000, with Knight Frank; 020 7629 8171, www.knightfrank.com
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