Cooking/Food Museums?

[cteavin]

I'm going back to Europe for my summer holiday and wanted to know if there were any cooking or food museums on the continent. I'll be in France, Belgium, Holland, and Spain. I've done several searches I couldn't find anything on my own.

Cheers,

Oh, one thing I'd love to see is ANYTHING about Julia Child's time in France while I'm there a close second is Escoffier.

[SylviaLovegren]

Saveur had a few http://www.saveur.com/article/Travels/Eat-With-Your-Eyes-Food-Museums

Slow Food: http://www.slowfoodutah.org/topics/view/22637/ has some as well (two of the same as Saveur's but an additional one in Switzerland)

The Slow Food France website might have some interesting things.

And there is an Escoffier Museum in Provence. Couldn't find a website for the museum but this article describes it: http://petanqueandpastis.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/01/muse_escoffier_.html

[Mjx]

In Italy they have a good number of museums dedicated to various specialties (e.g. Prosciutto di Parma), and it seems likely that this holds true for the countries you mention, so if you do an online search for {[some regional specialty] museum/musée/museo}, you should come up with quite a few options.

[ChrisZ]

There's a chocolate museum in Bruges, and judging from the website there are a few others around Europe as well. I wouldn't say the museum alone makes it worth the trip, but Bruges is such a lovely city that I'd use any excuse to go there... Bruges is full of chocolate shops but according to "The chocolate connoisseur" they don't manufacture any chocolate there, they just use couverture that is delivered to their door in a tanker truck.

London has the Vinopolis, a museum of wine. According to the website it's currently closed for a major rennovation and will re-open in October. I went a few years ago with a free ticket and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, and how educational it was.

Edinburgh has a Scotch Whisky museum, which I was convinced to visit by some entertaining spruikers during the comedy festival. It was a little bit kitsch but I really enjoyed it, and learned a lot about whisky. I especially appreciated the way that they ended the tour with four tastings of different Scotch whiskys, which allowed you to appreciate the variety and regional differences. If nothing else, I can now look at a list of whiskys on a drinks list and understand the terminology.

And I realise it's not in Europe, but Japan has a somewhat famous museum of tobacco and salt.

[teapot]

While not a museum in the formal sense, Dehillerin in Paris is like a living museum of cookware. It's been supplying restaurant tools since 1820. It's where Julia Child bought her copper cookware and other equipment. Highly recommend you visit it: http://www.e-dehillerin.fr/en/index.php