Visit Italy With a “Chopped” Champ

Writer, teacher, chef and "Chopped" champion Rachel Reuben will lead a "girlfriends' getaway" to Italy's dramatic Amalfi Coast in October.

Chef Rachel Reuben, second from right, at the Villa Rufolo—"the Downton Abbey of Ravello," she says—with guests on last May's Amalfi Coast culinary tour.
Chef Rachel Reuben, second from right, at the Villa Rufolo—"the Downton Abbey of Ravello," she says—with guests on last May's Amalfi Coast culinary tour.

Since winning a 2012 episode of Chopped, chef Rachel Reuben has been busy reinventing herself. In fact, that  stunning victory—achieved at age 53, one year after graduating from cooking school—was just one of her  self-reinventions. But we’ll get to that.

Reuben’s latest incarnation is that of culinary tour guide. She has teamed with travel planner Carol Ketelson of Delectable Destinations, which offers luxurious, all-inclusive, boutique adventures.

Last May, she led a group to Italy’s beautiful and dramatic Amalfi coast, its cliffs overlooking the Gulf of Salerno, just south of Naples in southwest Italy. They stayed at a private villa in Ravello, a blessedly uncrowded, untouristy town on the coast.

Rachel Reuben, left, at the Mamma Agata Cooking School of the Amalfi Coast.

Rachel Reuben, left, at the Mamma Agata Cooking School of the Amalfi Coast.

In October Reuben will lead a one-week culinary tour of Tuscany, in the north, and two more culinary tours of the Amalfi Coast. These, like the earlier one, she says, will be “a women’s retreat, like a girlfriends’ getaway.”

Up to seven women will spend a week with Reuben. The friends and their chef/leader will, Reuben says,  “do cooking classes in a private villa, go to the markets, go to artisanal food spots up and down the coast.”

The Mamma Agata Cooking School on the Amalfi Coast.

The Mamma Agata Cooking School on the Amalfi Coast.

At the same time, Reuben will help her tour guests “look at what your personal recipe for reinvention might be. What’s next in your life? Who do you want to be?”

Self-reinvention is a topic Reuben knows well. Her mother, Trudy, a Holocaust-survivor, went to Israel after the war and became a chef. Then she emigrated to this country and put her cooking skills to work, serving 35 years as private chef to an Englewood Cliffs physician and his wife.

Reuben herself earned a degree in journalism from Fairleigh Dickinson University at age 19. She then pursued an acting career in Los Angeles, wrote a novel, ran a graphic-design business, raised two children and help her second husband run his nutrition business.

But her turning point, her epiphany, came seven years ago when her son, Max Robbins, was finishing high school and preparing to apply to culinary schools.

“I took him around to visit all the schools,” Reuben relates, “and just started crying at every tour, because I realized I had this passion for cooking.”

Robbins enrolled at the CIA. His mom later began her studies at the French Culinary Institute (now the International Culinary Center) in Manhattan. They graduated at the same time.

Robbins has gone on to a successful career in the kitchen of Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry in Yountville, California.

Reuben won Chopped (taped in 2011, aired in 2012) competing under her then-married name, Rachel Willen. After graduating from culinary school, she had created Food Fix Kitchen, a culinary blog and cooking school she built in the Clinton garage of her then home.

Recently, Reuben launched Harvest, a healthy dining facility for Rutgers in its newly-completed New Jersey Institute for Food, Health and Nutrition in New Brunswick.

“It’s like a farm-to-table restaurant that has really spurred the conversation about healthy dining,” she says of the concept she created for the institute’s teachers, staff and students.

Now, with Delectable Destinations, she is back in her role as culinary teacher and tour guide, using her own story of finding her passion to help others do the same while experiencing a world-class food and travel adventure.

The Amalfi package (exclusive of airfare) costs $5,500 per person, including all accommodations, ground transportation, excursions, food and wine. The Tuscany tour, also exclusive of airfare, everything else included, is $4,800 per person.

foodfixkitchen.com

delectabledestinations.com

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