If the regular dinner and a movie outing is getting stale, maybe it's time to infuse date night with some fun; and some butter, garlic, and a sprinkling of fresh thyme.

Louis Gervais, one-time executive chef of the Sutton Place Hotel and the man behind his eponymous catering business and bistro on Harbourside Drive, kicked off a new cooking class series in the restaurant's studio kitchen last week.

Sales and event manager Heather Wright says Gervais has been teaching cooking classes for several years, but only for private and corporate events.

"They're always a lot of fun. The group all know each other and they have a great time. But we get more hits on our website from people looking for public classes."

It was a natural progression, but before deciding what structure the classes should have, Gervais and Wright did some reconnaissance by taking a class at The Dirty Apron cooking school downtown on Beatty Street.

Without the same kind of space and facilities for a demonstration station and separate cooking stations, the classes can't follow exactly the same format.

"We're going with a really informal structure. It's a casual evening, a fun night out for people who have an interest in food," says Wright.

The plan is to offer a class every two weeks from now until Christmas, with four classes to choose from: French Bistro Food, Rustic Italian, West Coast and one highlighting local ingredients.

For the first class last week, Gervais invited friends, supporters and local foodies to come give the French Bistro class a test run before he invited the public to slice, dice and stir with him and sous chef Bernard Deslaurier next week.

Since my regular date was otherwise engaged (code for: home with the kids), I was happily matched with fellow participant Diane Yarnold, general manager of Spa Utopia and something of a ringer when it comes to cooking. She likes to relax by making wedding cakes in her spare time.

We started by preparing puff pastry for our dessert: tarte tatin. Yarnold watched Deslaurier's demonstration and then expertly kneaded butter and flour, added water, rolled it out and rolled again.

Ever helpful, I squeezed lemon on her sliced apples, then caramelized them in butter and sugar.

After the gooey-sweet stewed apples were loaded into muffin tins and topped with Yarnold's perfect circles of pastry, staff slid them into the oven for baking.

We reloaded with a splash more wine and began on dinner.

Though Bernie's instructions were sometimes lost in the chatter of a noisy crowd, we all managed to slice and caramelize onions, deglaze, then add and reduce our stock to end up with beautiful, bubbling pots of soup a l'onion gratinée.

We topped them with baguette rounds and Gruyere, then handed them over for toasting and took our wine glasses back to the table for the first course.

Most participants were in groups of two and three and happily got to know their neighbours or the faces across the table as they slurped through their onion soup.

My chef (Yarnold) and I quietly agreed that our decision to add our red wine to our soup made it even better.

Once back at our cooking station, we decided to try the same trick for the sauce diable poivre for our rib eye steak, cooked rare and served with a heap of garlicky green beans. Our own pomme anna was an impressive layered circle of thinly sliced potato, browned in butter and finished in the oven.

It may have been the experience of my partner, but I've rarely been so delighted with my own efforts in the kitchen.

Our final course was the tarte tatin -- still warm, the puff pastry now a soft crust under the heap of saucy apples -- it was a sweet finish for a successful evening in the kitchen.

To find out more about cooking classes, or to register, visit www.louisgervais.com or call Nicole at 604-986-7720.

dlancaster@nsnews.com