Chicago Cooking & Happy Hour In-Person Events

Both work in Chicago. You can host in your own office — our chefs arrive with the equipment and build stations on ordinary tables, so your planner will talk through your space before the day. If it won't fit your group, or you'd rather make a night of it, we'll arrange a venue nearby and handle the booking. We cover Chicago from the Loop to Evanston and the surrounding area, so your team isn't crossing the city after work to get there.

Start with what you want the room to do, then pick the food. Cavatelli & Competition: teams shape pasta by hand and compete for the best pesto. The most physical option, and the loudest. Rolling & Bonding: Japanese maki rolls, sushi rice and plating, for a group that enjoys precision. Charcuterie & Connection: boards built from cured meats, cheeses, fruit, nuts, olives and jam. No heat, plenty of conversation. Tapas & Talk: Melon con Jamón, Pan con Tomate, Patatas Bravas and Piquillo de Atún, with a show-stopping leg of jamón as the centerpiece. Mixology & Mingle: hands-on cocktails led by expert bartenders, no cooking at all. Sipping & Socializing: a sommelier-led tasting of bold reds and crisp whites with cheese plates. During the holiday season the Chicago lineup also runs Festive Spanish Tapas, a Holiday Baking Championship where teams decorate festive three-layer cakes and prizes go to the most creative, best-tasting and most festive, and short add-on activities like Gingerbread Co-Workers.

Lean into food that gets built at the table. Chicago's most famous dish is younger than most people assume — deep-dish pizza was born here in 1943, at the restaurant now known as Pizzeria Uno, and it's pizza made to be eaten sitting down with a knife and fork rather than grabbed by the slice on the way somewhere. That's the same instinct behind Cavatelli & Competition and Charcuterie & Connection: the food takes a while, so people talk while they make it. For something unmistakably local, ask about our Chicago in-office BBQ, where the chefs bring the grill straight to your workplace.

You're not running anything — we bring the crew. A Chicago event is staffed with: A chef or mixologist leading the session, teaching technique and moving between groups. An event planner who has already built your menu, timeline and room setup before the day. Event helpers prepping ingredients, running stations and answering questions on the floor. Serving staff for the appetizers, refreshments and any extra courses you've added. A cleanup crew that leaves your office the way they found it. Skill level genuinely doesn't matter. We've run more than 1,000 events, and every menu is built so a first-timer finishes something they're proud of inside two hours. Add-ons like the Pesto Relay Race break the work into small jobs, so nobody gets stuck doing the hard part alone.

Tell us and we'll handle it, at no extra cost. Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, kosher and no-alcohol versions are all standard when you share them in advance, and your planner builds them into the menu rather than improvising on the day. Customization goes past diets too: combine two menus, swap a course, add a main and a dessert, or run cocktails alongside the cooking. Custom aprons with your team's names or your company logo are $40 per person if you want people to take something home.

Drinks can be the whole event or a layer on top of the cooking. Two Chicago menus are the happy hour in their own right — Mixology & Mingle, a hands-on cocktail session with all equipment and ingredients provided, and Sipping & Socializing, a guided wine tasting. On every cooking menu, alcohol is a named extra you add to the booking, and what's offered is set per menu: Wine and beer with Cavatelli & Competition. A sake tasting with the Rolling & Bonding sushi. Wine and sangria with Tapas & Talk. A wine tasting with Charcuterie & Connection. Appetizers and non-alcoholic refreshments come with every menu either way — snacks alongside the cocktails, cheese plates alongside the wine — so nobody is standing there empty-handed, and a no-alcohol version costs nothing extra when you flag it in advance. Tell your planner what you want poured and whether it's your own office or a venue we arrange, and it goes into the quote rather than surprising you later.

Everything needed to put the event on. Your Chicago package includes: Live instruction from the chef or mixologist. All ingredients, supplies and equipment. Setup and cleanup by the Rockoly team. Extra food and drinks, so nobody leaves hungry. A dedicated event coordinator plus free customizations. Event insurance. Rates move with the menu and the size of the group, so your planner quotes the whole event rather than a sticker price. Groups run from 3 people to 600 and up; very large teams are usually split by department or spread across a couple of days.

Three weeks for a cooking event, four for a happy hour, and considerably earlier than either if you want a December date on one of the festive menus. The Holiday Baking Championship and Festive Spanish Tapas run for a few weeks only, and Chicago books them out. Rush dates sometimes work when a chef is free, so it is worth asking either way. A deposit holds the date, by credit card, ACH transfer or check. Cancel 30 or more days out and you are refunded what you paid less any nonrecoverable costs already committed; 15 to 29 days out you choose between a 50% refund and a 100% Rockoly credit; inside 15 days payments are nonrefundable, though one complimentary reschedule is yours if you ask 30+ days ahead. We're rated 5 stars on Google across 105 reviews, and every booking carries our Love Your Event Guarantee: your team should have an amazing experience, and if your Rockoly event doesn't live up to expectations, we'll make it right. Send the form on this page or call (617) 939-9732 to get started.