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Sharpen your cooking skills at new culinary education destination.
Raleigh clearly has no shortage of restaurants keeping us fed, but nowhere schooling us on how to feed ourselves—until now. Enter Hone-Sharpen, a culinary education and entertainment destination promising to attract aspiring chefs and foodie fanatics alike.
Set to deliver culinary classes, lectures, pop-up dinners and competitions from its Smoky Hollow digs in early 2025, Hone-Sharpen, at its core, is a culinary guild—aka a community inviting similar interests and pursuits in food—in which founder Cherisse Byers aims to foster a welcoming and inclusive space for guests to ~sharpen~ their cooking skills, just as she did.
“While I was a [culinary] student, my husband called me and said, ‘Someone wants to know if you can teach a cooking class,’” recalls Byers. The last-minute opp opened the door for the founder to spend more time as an instructor, and, from “a place of curiosity,” the idea for Hone-Sharpen was born.
When selecting a locale, Smoky Hollow’s unique identity was an immediate draw. “I felt like I could get a great combination of the population in general—a ton of people from different backgrounds,” says the cuisinier, who hopes to educate, entertain and enlighten diverse ages and demographics—from professionals to eager students and beyond.
Catering to that range, a trio of classes meet you where you are. A demonstration kitchen with an island and chairs sets the scene for those leaning more entertainment than education with the casual Night Out experience—which, despite its name, is not limited to evening hours. As the most laid-back option, the relaxed demonstration is fit for newbies and fun alike—perfect for a girls’ or guys’ night out or beginner chefs.
Leveling up to a more hands-on experience, three kitchenettes fronting the demonstration kitchen serve up the aptly named Next Level op, dishing a deeper dive into techniques and ingredients.
And for six to eight would-be chefs—or anyone just wanting to “play chef”—an Intensive class experience rounds out the trio via, well, intensive instruction staged in a commercial kitchen. Plus you can jump between offerings based on the mood of the moment and culinary interests—but no matter your menu select, all courses deliver dishes destined to make you a regular, especially for that symbiotic experience.
When it comes to what the chef values curating most, she’d accept food blunders over sacrificing the energy and feel of the class every time. Not to say the food is trivial, but Byers is “not going to get hung up on it” at the expense of the guest experience. After all, she says, mishaps are at the heart of teachable moments. hone-sharpen.com
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