When Deanna Johnson makes fettuccine Alfredo, she goes big.

Johnson is the chef-owner of Black Forest Bistro, 6750 Shoup Road, where she started serving the Tableside Cheese Experience, starring fettuccine Alfredo.

Essentially, Johnson has a half wheel of aged Parmesan cheese shipped to her restaurant. Upon its arrival she hollows out the center of the wheel to make a bowl shape. The 60-pound wheel is pushed around the dining room on a tableside cart. A chef makes the fettuccine Alfredo in the hollowed-out bowl in the giant cheese wheel. Bowl after bowl of luscious and creamy cheese pasta dishes are whipped up in front of admiring guests.

“I first saw this being done in Florence (Italy) and then later at the Fancy Food Show in Las Vegas,” Johnson said. “A full wheel of Parmesan cheese is used as the tableside presentation of the pasta dish. It was such fun to watch and delicious to eat that I decided we needed to do this at our restaurant.”

For $25 you get a generous bowl of fettuccine mixed with loads of fresh Parmesan cheese scrapped from the wheel, combined with the Bistro’s special cream sauce; then it’s finished with just a hint of freshly ground black pepper. For an additional upcharge you can top the pasta with a choice of scallops, shrimp, chicken, lobster, sausage, broccolini or truffle oil. Garlic bread can be added, too.

“It’s been a hit,” Johnson said. “The half wheel lasts for about four to six weeks and we get about 1,000 servings from each wheel.”

Reservations are a must for the Tableside Cheese Experience, which is only served 4-7 p.m. Thursdays and 7-8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Details: 719-459-7884, bfbistro.com.

Earn and learn

Opus Creative Kitchen, 1 S. Nevada Ave., is a culinary and hospitality program, which is one of three programs currently operating under the umbrella of the Colorado Springs Community Cultural Collective. The culinary program was formerly known as Shovel Ready, which was in The Well, the now-defunct food hall.

Josh Kelly has joined Opus Creative Kitchen as the executive chef and lead mentor for the culinary program. He was the executive chef at Bonny and Read Fresh Seafood & Fine Steaks for more than eight years and was employed at Whole Foods Market before that.

“We take eight students at a time for an eight-week paid culinary training program at Opus. The last two weeks of the program is in a paid stage position in a local restaurant,” Kelly said. “We are currently working with our 11th cohort.”

The students learn all aspects of running a restaurant: food preparation, menu development, overall management, supplies ordering and resource management. Basically, students get all the resources needed to build a successful culinary career.

“We have a full catering operation too,” Kelly said. “We also prepare grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for the cafe at the Citizen’s Service Center 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays. And we do special programs at the downtown cafe in the evenings like a jazz cafe, wine dinners and monthly happy hours.”

Details: 719-424-1000, tinyurl.com/bp9f8kxy.

Chef classes

Abigail Lucas, owner of CoS Eats, is an Army veteran, culinary instructor and private chef. She is currently teaching cooking classes at The Hive Kitchen and Market, 6628 Delmonico Drive, where she offers an array of hands-on cooking classes.

You won’t go home empty-handed after the class. You are instructed to bring your own food storage containers because you will bring home approximately a week of dinners for two people. At a recent Instant Pot cooking class, we prepared eight one-pot dinners during the two-and-a-half-hour class. The recipes were down-home easy recipes and all were delicious. Think barbecue ribs, pot roast, mac and cheese, ramen, meaty spaghetti, mushroom risotto, German potato salad and sausage, beans and potatoes. We even learned how to make three styles of hard-cooked eggs: soft-cooked for the pork ramen along with medium- and hard-cooked.

And because Lucas is a busy young mom, she is a treasure trove of great ideas for speeding up time in the kitchen. For instance, although she gave a recipe for a barbecue spice rub for a rib dish, she suggested buying pre-marinated ribs from a local grocery meat department. That saved a lot of food preparation time.

For the class schedule, visit coseatsllc.com.

Olympian doings

Since Colorado Springs is known as Olympic City USA and the Olympic Games are in full swing, why not take advantage of the array of cuisines offered in the downtown area? Here are a couple of fun food tours to sample flavors from around the globe:

• There’s still time to get tickets for Rocky Mountain Food Tours’ pop-up Gold Medal Food Tour + Museum Experience 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through Aug. 18. For $99 you get an internationally themed food tour, which includes a ticket to the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Museum (good to use once through the year).

We went on the inaugural tour and enjoyed an amazing lunch feast. The tour started at Olympic & Paralympic Museum’s Flame Café, where the newly hired executive chef, Thomas Hartwell, offered duck confit pancakes (crêpes with spicy mayo dip) and a sweet dessert called Tanghulu, which is Asian street food of fresh fruit on a skewer and coated with a hard candy-like coating. The treats represented Beijing. Hartwell has introduced a new menu that represents popular foods from around the world for the summer season. After those tasty bites, we walked down Tejon Street to Avenue 19 food hall for slices of pie from Upstate Pizza representing Lake Placid, N.Y. Next, we strolled across Pikes Peak Avenue to La Baguette for its iconic French onion soup, representing Paris. Next up we hit CO.A.T.I food hall to visit Anju for kimchi and dumplings representing dishes from Seoul, South Korea. The final stop was at The Paleta Bar, also in CO.A.T.I, for refreshing Hispanic fruit popsicles like you get in Mexico City. Along the walk, tour guide Jason Gomez gave us all the facts you’d ever want to know about the history of the Olympics and how Colorado Springs won the Olympic City USA monicker. Tickets at tinyurl.com/yc564d3e.

• International Food Tour in downtown Colorado Springs is free and runs through Sunday. Visit 23 different global cuisines at restaurants, dine and earn points, and enter to win one of three prize packages. To get started, visit tinyurl.com/588k7bz4.

Contact the writer: 636-0271.