The clearest Southern-Hemisphere match — chef Dale Prentice runs a dedicated sous-vide and low-temperature teaching lab, the same vacuum-cooking archetype as Vakuum.
Count Rumford described cooking at low heat in 1799, but the modern kitchen toolkit came into the restaurant in France and Catalonia. In 1974, at the Troisgros restaurant in Roanne, the chef Georges Pralus cooked foie gras under vacuum and found it kept its shape, its fat and a better texture: sous-vide had reached the restaurant kitchen. In 1988 the physicist Nicholas Kurti and the chemist Hervé This named the science behind such work ‘molecular and physical gastronomy’. Then on the Costa Brava, Ferran and Albert Adrià’s team at elBulli brought alginate spheres into the restaurant, and their Texturas line sold gums such as xanthan to chefs. Today the craft is most alive in Catalonia. In Barcelona, Disfrutar, opened in 2014 by three chefs who met at elBulli, was named the best restaurant in the world in 2024.
Lilydale is where Melbourne stops and the Yarra Valley starts. The valley is Victoria's oldest wine-growing region — the regional wine body calls it the birthplace of Victorian wine, with a 170-year legacy — and over eighty wineries work it now, which turns the drive out of town into a series of decisions rather than a transfer. Melbourne itself has been a UNESCO Creative City of Literature since 2008, and it rewards the same habit the valley does: the good rooms are the ones you have to be told about. Give the trip a day at each end — the valley in daylight, the city after dark.
Last checked · Arnaud Callier · 9 October 2026
Learn sous-vide and low-temperature cooking in chef Dale Prentice's dedicated teaching lab.
One teaching lab under a named chef, and that is the whole of it: no scene around it, nothing published by anyone else, nobody counted. The company would be whoever booked the same course. Ask how many that is.
Living sceneNamed mastersVerified schoolsTakes students directlyThe Upper Room now hosts bespoke training built for a venue's own team; the public workshops we listed are not on the site. read on their site, 17 Sep 2026 ↗
A dedicated recipe-development and teaching space near Melbourne run by chef Dale Prentice (22+ years; ex-exec chef Stones of the Yarra Valley), with bespoke training for venue kitchen teams. Sous-vide / low-temperature focused rather than the full modernist spectrum.
A completed hands-on course at a master-led avant-garde technique lab · Certifying body: No single formal body — master-led technique labs / certificates of attendance
There is a real difference between a school that teaches you and a good-looking website, and too much of the internet is the second kind. Four instruments do the work, and every one of them is visible on the page you are already on.
If a place dodges these, that's your answer. It costs you nothing to ask, and it tells you everything.
This is the short version. The full method is here — the six questions, in order, for any craft anywhere.