L'Appetito Workshops & Retreats, 2025
See you in France and Italy!
FOOD & PHOTOGRAPHY RETREATS in ITALY and FRANCE
After a long (mostly due to the Great Plague years) pause, our little team is happy to reintroduce workshops, focusing on Italy and France. If you’re itching to visit the villages and countryside of these beautiful countries, look no further.
These workshops have been designed for people who love the romantic beauty of the South, by people who have always took the deep dive into the local culture, food and language and travelled both places extensively.
L’Appetito workshops are about great food, but also about photography, writing, discovery, and all-round creativity, for those who want to spend time working on their storytelling in these enchanting places.
To get on a workshop-exclusive email list and get early-bird access and discounts, check out this form.
JUNE 2025: ‘FINDING YOUR LIGHT’ at RELAIS DE CAMONT, FRANCE
Direct link to the event (program, prices etc) here.
Created by Valentina Solfrini to inspire and instruct you in discovering your style and approach to food photography while basking in the rustic light of the Relais de Camont’s 18th-century French farmhouse—a perfect marriage of place and time.
Join me and in her beautiful home in Gascogne, Southwest France, for 5 days of immersion into food photography and French cuisine. If you’ve been dreaming of a french getaway to learn more about creativity, this is your chance.
What will we do?
We will visit food markets and a brocante. We will learn how to style and photograph tables and food. We will be fully immersed into the dreamy produce and food traditions of Gascogne. We will learn to take beautiful photos in natural light. We will lunch in one of France’s most beautiful villages. And more.
This photography workshop will also be a chance to develop your creativity tout-court: we will talk about writing, storytelling through words and images, getting your ideas out. There will be, of course, great wine.
As someone who photographed food for cookbooks and companies all throughout her career, and taught food photography at University, I pour all of my experience into my workshops and topics range from mastering the use of your camera to shooting a book. You can read the full description and reserve your place here.
This is the only full-on, 100% food photography & storytelling-focused professional workshop I am hosting this year, as the Puglia one (see below) will have a slightly different focus.
Check out Relais de Camont HERE.
SEPTEMBER 2025: ‘A Southern Light’ in SALENTO, PUGLIA, ITALY
Coming to Salento is like going from black and white to the color of dreams.
~ Fabrizio Caramagna
Evening aperitivo, late dinners in the warm piazzas of the south, local nonnas making handmade pasta on the streets: this is what you imagine when you think of puglia and you are 100% right.
What will we do?
We will find ingredients and taste and smell local products through the colorful markets of Salento. We will visit its incredible blue sea - still so warm in september. We will dine al fresco, eat out in one of the many hustling and bustling traditional restaurants of the area, hear the enchanting local music (ever heard of Pizzica?), join the vivid, warm, colorful chaos and down-to-earth savoir faire that is the Italian south, in the golden light of Otranto and Gallipoli.
From the masseria where we will be staying, we will learn about photography as a creative means of expression, portraiture and self-portraiture along my talented friend Emiliano Picciolo, a true Pugliese and longtime photography teacher. We will talk about recognizing one’s self through self portrait, catching the best light for portraiture, take photos in the outdoors, all within the context of blue seas and white stone and great food that makes Puglia so magical. Yoga and massages will be available.
This is truly one of my favorite places in the world and I cannot wait to make this workshop happen.
COOKING CLASSES, WINE & FOOD TOURS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE
AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2025, DISCOVERING THE QUERCY & LOT VALLEY, FRANCE
The Lot valley and Dordogne - an area which seemed to have ‘plus belles villages de France’ than any other - became my dream destination. […] ‘On mange bien, là -bas’, they said. The colors changed as we travelled, until we were surrounded by shades of honey, ochre, terracotta and the green-gold of burrs.
Our first night was spent in St-Cirq Lapopie, a medieval village-perché, in a hotel just under André Breton’s house. […] I’ll just stay here, I thought, and lie on the white bedcover looking at the stars and thinking about walnuts.
~ ‘Monsieur Matuchet Plays the Piano’, from How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henry.
These are the words of Diana Henry after visiting one of the most beautiful villages of France which sits in one of the most stunning, pictoresque areas of France, the Quercy - the ancient region that inscribed the Lot, part of the Tarn-et-Garonne, and bits of Dordogne, Corréze and Aveyron. It is the area with the most ‘Most Beautiful Villages of France’, whose valleys are traversed by lush woods, deep river gorges and medieval buildings.
I have this workshop in mind as a culinary experience - a cheaper, chiller version of other workshops involving photography or specific skills: in a place so rich in food culture, the plan is to just discover places like Rocamadour, home of one of the best cheeses in the Country, the delicate Quercy saffron, other products like walnuts and walnut oil, the savoir-faire behind creations like duck paté and the wine of Cahors. A chance to learn new recipes with fresh ingredients, cook together and have culinary classes (wouldn’t you love to learn how make paté from scratch?), walk through stone villages and escape the world for a few days.
Some shorter culinary, food & wine retreats are also in the works in French & Italian villages, TBA.
Because I want to check for interest for this, I still made no clear plans. But I would like to craft this experience along with those interested. This is why I am creating an early bird mailing list, and those who are interested in this workshops (and the Puglia one) will get a discount just for being in the list. This email adress will be used *exclusively* for communications relating to these workshops.
TO JOIN THE EARLY BIRD LIST, CLICK HERE!
Thank you and see you soon!
This looks like an amazing opportunity! I do not have the funds, but can dream of doing it one day. My daughter and I created recipes for a UK magazine but the photos used were stock ones, as it's so tricky to get them perfect!