About Rustic

Rustic Cooking Class started in 2014 as Sri Lanka’s first hands-on cooking class combined with a local market tour, titled Market Tour & Hands-On Cooking Class Colombo.

Our team had been working with prominent destination management companies, organizing tours and serving as tour guides countrywide. Through these experiences, we recognized a significant gap in authentic culinary experiences across Sri Lanka. At that time, culinary tourism wasn’t popular in the Sri Lankan tourism industry. When travel companies wanted to showcase cooking to group tours, they typically arranged homestay visits—but these were rare and limited. These weren’t true hands-on cooking classes; they were brief 30-45 minute demonstrations where everything was pre-prepared, showing guests how to make a single item or a batch of string hoppers.

During this period, there were no platforms to promote experiences like cooking classes. TripAdvisor began allowing reviews for tours and activities (including cooking classes) around 2015–2016, shortly after fully integrating Viator’s experience listings into its platform.