The founders of the Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School, the Mediterranean Cooking School, and the Tropical Creole Cooking School, Daniel G. Abel, Charles L. Leary, and Vaughn J. Perret have worked together as food-world entrepreneurs for over sixteen years. They founded Chicory Farm in Louisiana's Washington Parish in 1990 to farm organic produce, specialty mushrooms, and European-style cheeses. Soon, Chicory Farm had become purveyor to numerous fine restaurants and specialty food stores throughout the United States. Their endeavors drew the attention of the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Food & Wine, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Observer, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, among many others. In 1996, the trio started the Chicory Farm Cafe in New Orleans's Uptown district, a restaurant that for three years helped re-define the culinary universe of the Crescent City, and earned accolades from Fodors, the James Beard Foundation, Vegetarian Times, the TV Food Network, and the Los Angeles Times Magazine. In 1998, they sold their Louisiana enterprises and moved to Nova Scotia, where they opened Trout Point Lodge. In 2004, they opened the Inn at Coyote Mountain and its on-site Creole Cooking School. At the time, Travel & Leisure magazine noted: "Traditionally, Costa Rica hasn’t been a place known for fine cuisine. With the . . . opening of the Inn at Coyote Mountain . . . the country’s reputation as a food purgatory was transformed." In 2006, they opened Casa Azahar and the Mediterranean Cooking School in Granada, Spain where Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret have resided since 2002.

Abel, Leary, and Perret, along with guest chefs and local food experts, lead all Food Learning Vacations. They are the authors of the Trout Point Lodge Cookbook: Creole Cuisine from New Orleans to Nova Scotia published by Random House in New York and Toronto.

DANIEL G. ABEL was born and raised in south Louisiana. He received his B.A. in history and M.A. summa cum laude in English literature from the University of Southwestern Louisiana, studied for two years at the elite Gregorian University in Rome, Italy, and earned a law degree from Loyola University. A prominent New Orleans attorney, Mr. Abel has worked on numerous complex litigations throughout the country and the world. He teaches on the skills faculty of Loyola University Law School, and is the co-author, with Peter Harry Brown, of a book on gun control issues published by Simon & Schuster.

Mr. Abel has also maintained a lifelong interest in food and cooking. At a young age he began working in Cajun restaurant kitchens like Thelma's of Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. He then moved to New Orleans, where he managed jazz musician Al Hirt's Cafe St. Cecile, and later served as Proprietor and Executive Chef of the Chicory Farm Cafe. Mr. Abel has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and Latin America, also having lived in Puerto Rico for many years. Under his management the Chicory Farm Cafe received recommendations from Fodor's, the Los Angles Times Magazine, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and Zagat's, and received an invitation to the James Beard House in New York. He currently directs the Nova Scotia Seafood Cooking School and is a Managing Director of Trout Point Lodge.

VAUGHN J. PERRET, a New Orleans native, earned a BA in history from Loyola University and an MA in cultural anthropology from Tulane University before receiving his JD from Cornell. He grew up on Creole cooking and Louisiana seafood, and later lived in Paris.

At Chicory Farm, Mr. Perret established a mushroom cultivation laboratory and growing operation, and oversaw an extensive market garden certified organic by the Louisiana Department of Agriculture. An expert in wild edible foods, Mr. Perret is past Vice President of the Gulf States Mycological Society, and participated in the historic wild mushroom research expedition in Morocco with noted mycologists Rolph Singer and Gary Lincoff in 1993. He has consulted with the French agricultural research station at Bordeaux on specialty mushroom cultivation. Mr. Perret also directed cheese development and affinage at the Chicory Farm Creamery. In 1994, he received a Small Business Innovative Research grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for work on alternative crop cultivation technologies. This grant and another one on dairy sheep production in 1995 directed by Dr. Leary resulted in Chicory Farm receiving the first annual Tibbetts Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration, a national honor.

From 1995 until 1998, Mr. Perret oversaw concept and menu development for the Chicory Farm Cafe, and along with his two partners worked as founding vendor at the New Orleans and Baton Rouge farmer's markets. In addition, he has acted as an advisor on wild edible mushroom collection and cookery to a number of New Orleans chefs. Like his partners, he is among only a handful of Americans inducted into the prestigious French Guilde des fromagers, based in Dijon. Mr. Perret specializes in seafood cookery and wild foods, and has lectured on cooking at venues such as Longue Vue Gardens and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

CHARLES L. LEARY holds an AB degree, magna cum laude, with high honors and distinction in history, from Kenyon College, and MA and PhD degrees in modern Chinese history from Cornell University. He has taught on the adjunct faculty at Tulane University and was a research fellow at the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Taiwan and at Newcomb College’s Center for Research on Women.

He has lived in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan and has a special love of and expertise in Chinese cuisine. Born in Oregon, he has also lived in various parts of the U.S. From 1990 until 1998 he served as co-proprietor of Chicory Farm, where he produced European-style, raw-milk cheeses and marketed them to chefs around the United States, while also assisting in mushroom & organic produce cultivation. Under Dr. Leary’s guidance, Chicory Farm acted as a purveyor to New Orleans' prominent restaurants including Commander's Palace, Emeril's, the Grill Room, Bella Luna, Brigsten's, Andrea’s, Peristyle, and NOLA, and also to restaurants across the country like Everest (Chicago), An American Place, Picholine, Le Bernardin, and Gramercy Tavern (New York), and the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton (San Francisco). With his direction, Chicory Farm cheeses received accolades and recommendations from the New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, & the TV Food Network, and were served at the Mobil 5-Diamond Chef's Awards in Atlanta in 1997 and at the Food & Wine Magazine Classic in Aspen, Colorado. Chicory Farm's soft-bodied, washed-rind Catahoula cheese, developed by Dr. Leary and Vaughn Perret, received praised as the best American cheese in a New York Times interview with Maitre fromager Max McCallman, co-author of The Cheese Course.

He has researched cheese production in France's Loire Valley under the auspices of ITOVIC, and also at the Washington State University Creamery. In addition to East Asia, Dr. Leary has traveled extensively in Mexico, Central and South America, and Western Europe. Dr. Leary oversaw cheesemaking at La Ferme d'Acadie, and along with Vaughn Perret directs the kitchen at Trout Point Lodge. He has written on numerous occasions for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and also for Fine Cooking, American Way, Republican China, and recipes for Louisiana Cookin’ and Food & Wine.

"extraordinary" Food & Wine magazine

"Nova Scotia nirvana" the New Orleans Times-Picayune

"lip-smacking trips to satisfy your culinary cravings" Canadian Geographic magazine

"Gourmet Getaway" "Canada's Top Cooking Schools" Chatelaine magazine

"There may be dozens of eco-lodges in Costa Rica, but there is only one vacation cooking school. The Inn at Coyote Mountain is almost too good to be true: a 5-star luxury hotel, gourmet cooking school, and idyllic nature retreat all rolled into one. Guests learn about sustainable and organic agriculture, explore the culinary history of the Americas, and participate in the very best that responsible travel has to offer. "

David Lukas, Lonely Planet

"Gourmet tropical-creole culinary vacations and a spacious teaching kitchen draw guests to this remote inn."

Fodors Costa Rica 2006

"On a remote hilltop, Charles Leary and Vaughn Perret, the chef-owners of Trout Point Lodge in Nova Scotia, have created an intimate retreat where aspiring chefs can join one- to three-day classes on 'Caribbean-Creole' cooking."

Heidi Mitchell, Travel & Leisure

Praise for the Proprietor-Chef-Instructors' Cuisine

"Luxury and great food . . . In the mountains overlooking the Pacific, the Inn at Coyote Mountain offers a Creole-Latin menu and hands-on instruction at its Creole cooking school." Food & Wine

"Traditionally, Costa Rica hasn’t been a place known for fine cuisine. With the . . . opening of the Inn at Coyote Mountain . . . the country’s reputation as a food purgatory was transformed."

Travel & Leisure

"this gorgeous hilltop Spanish hacienda-style inn an hour and a half west of San José boasts one of the best kitchens in the land."

concierge.com

'where to get some of the country’s best food—innovative Latin-Creole dishes by chef-owners from Nova Scotia who also run a cooking school here.'

brides.com

"In the eighteenth century, the British expelled the French-speaking Catholics from Nova Scotia, then known as Acadia, or l'Acadie in French. Many of them ended up in Louisiana and became known as Cajuns (from "Acadians"). A close emotional connection persists between the two communities. The menu at Trout Point Lodge reflects this bond. Louisiana dishes like smoked fish jambalaya get as much emphasis as Nova Scotia specialties, such as Rappie Pie, a traditional Acadian dish of scallops and clams baked between layers of grated potatoes.

But more than anything, the owners are inspired by the fresh ingredients around them."

Marq DeVilliers, Food & Wine

". . . health-conscious, fresh-and-local, gourmet dinners in the nattily-appointed, informal but ever-so-patrician Trout Point Lodge."

Keith Marshall, emerils.com

"food is their forte"

Darlene King, Harrowsmith Country Life

"We ate five-course dinners family style, at a long table covered with a cloth and lighted by candles. On either end of the heavily beamed country kitchen style dining room, snapping fires burned in twin granite fireplaces. Edith Piaf sang. Gregorian chants. Rousing symphonies."

Millie Ball, New Orleans Times-Picayune

Reviews of the Management's Previous New Orleans Restaurant:

In 1990, three professionals looking for a new direction in life bought a 100-acre farm in Washington Parish and turned to raising specialty produce to supply upscale New Orleans restaurants. Lawyer Vaughn Perret, a native of New Orleans, was returning to Louisiana after a year with a New York law firm. Daniel Abel, a Lafayette native and also a lawyer, hooked up with Perret through the legal community. Charles Leary grew up in Oregon and met Perret in graduate school at Cornell University; he had come to Louisiana to finish his doctorate degree in modern Chinese history and teach at Tulane.

The three started by growing lettuce and mushrooms and expanded into handmade cheeses, acquiring herds of dairy goats and sheep along the way. In February, they joined with Perret's mother, Laura, and opened a combination gourmet store and cafe on Hillary Street in New Orleans, selling and serving Chicory Farm products and other vegetarian fare. Since then, the cafe has pretty much taken over the space.

"Food: Excellent. . . . sophisticated fare that satisfies." "inspired meals of marvelous complexity, brimming with vigor and verve, by turns earthy and elegant."

New Orleans Times-Picayune restaurant review, 1997.

"The café's owners also run Chicory Farm, which lies on 100 acres in the historic Florida Parishes region of Louisiana due North of New Orleans. There they practice diverse, sustainable agriculture, cultivating certified organic vegetables, fruits and mushrooms, in addition to producing cheeses from cow, goat and sheep milk. The café uses this produce in creating recipes such as braised portobello mushrooms with caramelized onions and spinach laced with St. John cheese and lemon-thyme aioli; panéed eggplant over macque choux (a corn, green pepper and tomato creation) served with braised bitter greens; and black-eyed peas with sautéed mirliton, okra and smoked corn, complemented by a mushroom cornbread dressing. The food at the café is excellent. Representatives of the prestigious James Beard Foundation in New York were recently in town sampling the food here and extended a coveted invitation to Chicory Farm to host a dinner at the James Beard House next year. In case you want to sample some of the Chicory Farm cheeses, they are also available on cheese plates at such renowned New Orleans restaurants as Bella Luna, Commander's Palace, Emeril's, the Grill Room, Vino Vino and the Palace Café." Gambit Weekly restaurant review, 1997.

"The ingredients, recipes, and presentations all compete with the best being offered anywhere else." "All of this produce makes its way onto the inspired menu at the cafe. Mushrooms--the vegetarian's favorite meat substitute--are found throughout the menu, and are the most fascinating of the offerings. They're used in three drastically different forms in the appetizer selection. Shiitakes, meaty and mellow, form the core of a Rockefeller-style mini-casserole. A variety of oven-roasted mushrooms, enriched with sherry and herbs, is wrapped in pastry and baked. Finally, there's a forkable pate of wild mushrooms. All are without flaw." Tom Fitzmorris, New Orleans City Business restaurant review, 1998.

"Chicory Farm Cafe is the only restaurant we know that serves complex, French-inspired Creole cuisine using no meat or meat substitutes. . . . The elegant restaurant, set in a turn-of-the-century neoclassical house in the Uptown area of New Orleans, has become a favorite among local "foodies," also earning raves from culinary critics around the country."

Vegetarian Times, July 1997