Art of the meal: company bonds forged in kitchen.

• Author: Graham, Sandy
• Position: Attitude altitude - Passionate Palate

TO BUILD TEAM SPIRIT IN THE workplace, sometimes you have to turn up the heat. Lance Sedlak of Arrow Electronics uses a stove top and oven.

For some of his team building, Sedlak takes employees to the Passionate Palate, a cooking school near Park Meadows mall, where colleagues can bond over a saute pan or cutting board. He discovered the school when his neighborhood dinner club met there.

"I immediately was impressed by the connection between team-building, entertainment and a great meal at a fair price," said Sedlak, director of enterprise storage marketing for Arrow, the world's largest distributor of electronic components and computing systems. Cooking hasn't replaced traditional team building, he adds, but "it's icing on the cake, to give it a culinary flair. It reinforces collaboration, creative thinking and group dynamics in a comfortable setting."

The Passionate Palate is one of several Colorado cooking schools that have helped businesses create out-of-the-ordinary team-building experiences.

The Seasoned Chef in Denver, for instance, has conducted cooking sessions for five or six years, said director Susan Stevens. In one variation, teams are divided in groups, given ingredients and basic instruction, and told to create a dish. "It really challenges their creativity and ability to work together," Stevens says.

At the Passionate Palate, co-owners Ben Davis and Jennifer Sudam have held team-building events two or three times a week...