Meet Natasha & Michael – August 2025’s Amigo of The Month! From a birthday gift voucher to countless classes together, they’ve made The Avenue part of their foodie adventures, date nights, and family feasts. Find out which dishes they’ve mastered and their most unusual dinner party idea yet…

How did you hear about The Avenue?
Natasha heard about The Avenue through a friend – they bought her a gift voucher for a birthday and they went to a class together. Natasha loved it, and so we have been going to new classes together ever since. What a smart friend of Natasha’s!

How long have you been joining classes?
Natasha’s first class was in March 2023 but we’ve been going together since June 2023.

Which classes have you done?
The Bao Class was the gift class, and since we have done: Beef Wellington, Knife Skills, Spanish Tapas Class, Sushi and Cocktails and Argentinian. We were recommended the Sushi and Cocktails as a date night choice, and it didn’t disappoint! Michael has repeated Beef Wellington with his family, which went down a treat, and Natasha’s parents have booked onto an Italian Class in the autumn. We love hosting your family with ours!

What was your favourite class at The Avenue?
They’ve all been good, the Sushi and Cocktails was really fun as a date night but not as focused on cooking. The Beef Wellington was most educational with really good food at the end of it. It was also something that’s quite daunting to cook if you don’t know what you’re doing. So it was really great to have someone to give you all the tips, tricks and a science lesson. Something for everyone!

What’s your favourite dish to cook that you learnt with us?
It’s given us confidence to try a lot of recipes, we’ve cooked the Bao Buns a few times (in a make-shift steamer) and they are always very good. We also like making the Chocolate Mousse from the Spanish Tapas Class, and we use our knife skills daily, though we’ve never wanted to fillet an orange again. Sounds like you’re eating like kings, which we are delighted about!

What was your favourite dish to eat at The Avenue?
We both loved the Beef Wellington, it was so good that Michael’s done it twice (once with his dad). We’ve cooked it at home as well, and have used similar techniques for Salmon en Croûte, and cooked the side dishes lots of times. Great to hear you are using learned techniques for similar dishes!

What is the most obscure thing you have made in the kitchen?
We hosted a dinner party where everything was themed around Eggs, but there were no Eggs actually used for the dishes. The main was Sausages and Mash, where the sausage and mash were Egg shaped, with the Sausage as the yolk, served in a nest of vegetables. The desert was a Chocolate Egg with Ice Cream and fruit inside – when you poured hot sauce on it the egg melted open. It was an experience, but not something we’d cook every night. We absolutely love the creativity here!

What class would you like to do in the future?
We would love to do the Ethiopian Class, but we’ve not yet got the dates to align. We’re also eying up the Sri Lankan Class and have been recommended it by others!

Any final comments?
We loved being local-ish to The Avenue for a few years – and we keep aiming to come back for more even though we’ve moved away. We really appreciate that every class has catered for Natasha’s dietary requirements (and the website has some very helpful filters!) And of course, the lovely supply of wine needs to be mentioned!

Thanks so much to Natasha & Michael for sharing their Avenue story and for being part of our ever-growing foodie family!
We can’t wait to see what you cook up next and we’re holding you to that Ethiopian Class!

Thanks for joining us for this August 2025’s Amigos of the Month. The classes mentioned in this post:
Bao Class, Beef Wellington, Knife Skills, Spanish Tapas Class, Sushi and Cocktails, Argentinian, Italian Class, Ethiopian Class, Sri Lankan Class

If you want to join The Avenue Family by becoming a future Amigo of the Month, email us at [email protected]