Netflix had a minor hit in 2022 with the show La Pitchoune: Cooking in France, a limited series about a cooking school held in Julia Child’s former cottage in Châteauneuf, France. The school is taught by a pair of young women who introduce visiting students to the pleasures of the local markets and ingredients of Provence. But as it turns out, two Nashville-based bakers were actually way ahead of that game.
Lisa Donovan has been an important part of the Nashville culinary community as a cook and pastry chef at some of the city’s most beloved restaurants, including Margot Cafe & Bar, City House and Husk. She is also a James Beard Award-winning writer known for her essays and the 2020 book Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger, which share her reflections and anecdotes about the stressful and complicated life of working in kitchens. Julie Belcher started out as a home baker and developed her passion into a career, studying in Angers, France, at Boulangerie des Carmes to learn from the masters. She eventually started up her own cooking school with Miette Nashville in Joelton.
Together this talented duo launched Rêverie, a cooking school that invites 12 to 15 travelers to stay in chateaus in France for a week of immersion in the culinary traditions and culture of different regions ranging from the Loire Valley to the French Riviera. Even more important than what they teach in the kitchen, Donovan and Belcher strive to introduce students to how to travel and really understand what makes smaller communities special.
They’re also both rediscovering what it means to experience joy in the kitchen.
“I met Lisa in 2012 when she was starting at Husk, and I was a barista at Crema,” Belcher recalls. “She helped me get my first kitchen job with Tony Galzin at Flyte. Tony was brilliant and very helpful. Then I started working as an assistant at Husk, where I learned I wasn’t built for a restaurant kitchen.”
Donovan had a similar, but much longer, experience in hospitality. “Some people think I’ve had a varied mess of a career,” she says, “but I was just doing what interested me at the time. I was recuperating from restaurant life.”
In addition to lots of personal and professional travel and cooking at private events, Donovan was teaching the occasional cooking class when she took a gig helping out at a painting retreat in France led by Nashville artist Emily Leonard. Donovan immediately thought of her friend. “Julie was still living in France, so I called her and said ‘Man, you should come!’” she remembers. “I didn’t have a lot of experience with the region. She was my language guide and showed me the markets.”
The group of people coming together to learn about art and food really struck Donovan. “It was like my weird collection of jobs funneled into one thing!” she says. “Everything I was doing was trying to gear my life toward a very communal experience, and cooking took the shape of something beautiful again. It just felt like the reason I started cooking.”
Leonard planned another retreat in New Mexico for later that year, so Donovan invited Belcher to help out again with the cooking component. “That felt way more like a partnership, and Julie was back in Nashville, so we started talking seriously about doing something for ourselves,” explains Donovan.
In 2019, the duo officially created Rêverie and led their first excursion to Toulouse. Renting a chateau for a week, Belcher and Donovan created a home base for their students to learn about the community in a deeply personal way. “That’s one thing that makes us different,” says Belcher. “This isn’t a tour; you only unpack once. We take a deep dive into the 50 miles around us wherever we stay. It’s about the community, not even the region.”
“The main goal is not to just show up somewhere and point at things,” Donovan adds. “We try to share the richness of the experience.”
Market visits are an important component of the weekly itinerary, intended to teach about more than just the local ingredients available. Belcher says, “We help people learn how to travel, how to go out on their own.”
“There are simple rules of engagement in the market,” says Donovan. “It’s a sacred space, their version of church. You should ask before you take photos, and offer a friendly ‘hello’ before engaging — don’t just order. Americans don’t necessarily know they’re being rude!”
While the schedule for a week at Rêverie is stuffed with opportunities like Donovan’s pastry classes, Belcher teaching about sourdough, guest chef workshops, natural wine tastings and dinners at local restaurants, the operators ensure that everything is optional. “Guests can have as much free time as they want,” says Donovan. “Since we stay in the same chateau for the week, it’s fine if someone wants to be a little cavalier and spend the day by the pool, book a massage or just catch up on a book.”
In addition to the cooking classes, Donovan and Belcher prepare most of the evening meals for the group, and their kitchen is always open. “We welcome anyone to come to just enjoy a glass of wine and sit and watch us in the kitchen,” assures Donovan. “We talk about cooking, and the guests can help out with dinner or just practice their knife skills.”
“This is for all levels of cooks,” says Belcher. “One student made it very clear that she wasn’t a cook and didn’t even own an apron or any knives. After the trip, she texted me a picture of dinner and bragged, ‘I used two pans!’ Other people cook all the time and even teach us things.”
After skipping 2020 due to the pandemic, Rêverie returned with more new itineraries, adding trips to chateaus in Normandy, the Loire Valley and the French Riviera to Toulouse on the list of destinations. New developments in the curriculum include appearances by notable guest chefs who are friends of Donovan and Belcher.
Jérôme Navarre of La Maison Navarre in Gimont taught a class on regional Gers cooking on a recent Toulouse trip, and Melissa Martin will join the next retreat on the French Riviera from her popular Mosquito Supper Club in New Orleans. Chef Richard Ruan has been Belcher’s baking mentor, and he teaches classes in classic French techniques of the Loire Valley, where he’ll be joined on the next trip by Naomi Pomeroy, whom the James Beard Foundation named Best Chef Northwest in 2014 for her work at Beast in Portland, Ore. Other guest chefs on the docket include baking cookbook authors Erin McDowell and Tera Jensen, Top Chef runner-up and Beard Award winner Nina Compton of New Orleans and — in a major bit of local news — Trevor Moran of Locust, who will help lead a new itinerary in Ireland for 2024.
While travel to and from the destination is not included in the cost of the classes — which are in the $6,000 to 7,000 range for a week — Donovan and Belcher are happy to help with arrangements and handle airport transfers and all transportation in luxury black cars during the week of classes. These retreats usually sell out well in advance, and the capacity of the chateaus is a limiting factor that maintains the intimacy of the experience.
“We’re trying to grow organically,” Belcher says. “We’ve gone from two classes a year to four, and now six or seven. We’ll keep adding a couple a year until we feel we’re good.”
Feeling good is the most important thing to Donovan right now. “We’re both deeply committed to bringing joy back to the kitchen space!” she says. “I could’ve walked away, but by introducing new people to how to integrate travel, food and culture, I have reestablished this space as a place for me.”
It seems like Donovan’s “varied mess of a career” is definitely turning in the right direction for herself and her students.
