I want to start with the positives. Our chef who led the class was great! She was knowledgeable and the class was easy to follow. The food was decent, but gave me terrible heartburn.
However, there are a couple oversights I'm not particularly thrilled about. For instance, I found out I was pregnant after signing up for the class. According to the dishes we were cooking, there was only one that sounded like I wouldn't be able to eat (champagne chocolate truffles). I'm not big on chocolate, so we decided to go ahead and keep the class. What I didn't know is every single dish with the exception of the main course had alcohol in it. However, the main course had deli meat that was not cooked thoroughly. The disclaimer online says food allergies but never specified anything about alcohol in almost every dish. Although the alcohol is mostly cooked out, it is never safe to have any amount while pregnant. Not once did it mention alcohol would by cooked in almost every dish. Had I known, I would have called ahead to specify. Also, since I'm so early in my pregnancy, it's been difficult to openly mention it to people.
I can't 100% fault them. I should have been more proactive, but according to the dishes listed, it made it look like I could have the dishes without issue. So if you are pregnant, do not take a class without first calling and verifying! I ended up walking out hungry since I felt like it was only ok to eat a spoonful of each dish. Just felt like a waste of money.
The class itself is fairly straightforward. All of the ingredients are cut up and pre-measured. So all you have to do is combine ingredients in order. The only caveat, is when you have a ton of people talking over each other or the chefs voice doesn't carry, I can be very easy to miss adding an ingredient at the right time. This happened to us twice and so our food didn't turn out as expected. I would have found it helpful to have a printed out recipe to follow during the class. With how much I paid, I feel like I deserve the recipe written down too so I can try it at home.
There's also a rather stupid rule that you cannot bring any leftover food home. You either have to sit there and finish or it gets thrown out. So the majority of my food had to be thrown out since my husband couldn't eat two helpings of the food. Since my pregnancy is my own dietary issue, I'm not going to inconvenience others. But it would have been nice to take home so my husband could eat the leftovers.
The whole experience just felt a little awkward. Lots of random people that you have to cook with, share pots and ingredients. Just wasn't exactly for me. I can see why others would like it. But personally for me, I didn't think it was worth the money. The few bites I tried of the food had too much butter and didn't taste great (granted that most likely had to do with the missing ingredients).
Glad I tried it. But probably won't do again. read more