For Young Chefs Summer Camps

For Young Chefs Summer Camps focuses on hands-on cooking, where campers work with flavors, techniques, knife skills, and new ingredients. The program includes clean cooking and presentation, and campers prepare a 4-course meal with new flavors, new recipes, and new techniques every session. Each week follows a Weekly Around-the-World Series format in a coed, small-group setting with open enrollment and limited space, and a minimum of 9 campers is required for camps to take place.

• Ages: 9–18 years old
• Schedule: 9:30 am – 2 pm
• Price: $ 649.00 per week | Includes all ingredients, apron, hands on instruction, recipe book & of course lunch!

For Young Chefs Summer Camps runs weekly Around-the-World Series sessions from June 1st through July 31st, 2026. Campers learn how to cook, do mise en place, read recipes, learn the importance of good ingredients, and create balanced meals, with vegetarian and gluten-free substitutions available. The program includes all ingredients, an apron, hands-on instruction, a recipe book, and lunch.

Chef Palma (Palma Bellinghieri), a second-generation culinary artist and chef, leads the program. She was born and raised in Mexico City and is a graduate of the Villa Pierrefeux Institute and Centre International de Glion, Hotel Management School in Montreaux, Switzerland. For the past 18 years, Chef Palma has specialized in vegetarian cooking, and during the spring and summer she runs “For Young Chefs Camps,” a culinary experience for kids 9–15 and 16 years and older. The mission of the program states that the kitchen becomes a classroom where curiosity learns discipline and becomes intention as creativity finds its hands, and that through knife skills students grow steadier, focus deepens, and cooking turns into a quiet lesson in care, patience, and pride.

The program’s community involvement invites families to help transform the lives of children and teenagers across the border through the art of music and to donate instruments to the Symphony of San Felipe, Baja California through its foundation. Testimonials from campers include Sam, 13, who said, “It was awesome cutting, pouring, mixing and squeezing!! I learned to cut things in many different ways!” Kacey, 11, shared that the program was a ton of fun, that everyone participated in everything and switched areas such as chopping, BBQ, hot area, and cold table, and that they cannot wait to come back next summer. Anastasia, 13, said she enjoyed learning about many types of food, liked having her own apron and binder with every recipe for every dish made, appreciated that the class size was not huge or extremely small, and named making Flan Caramel as her favorite part.

Last updated March 13, 2026.