Cooking Class - A Taste of the Thai Summer

Chef was great

I was incredibly disappointed by this class. First things first, I booked this because it mentioned bringing wine or beer. We were immediately told that this was not allowed. We were really excited to have this as a date night and that plan had to change. I could’ve moved on past this if the class was at all impressive but it wasn’t. The teacher never introduced himself. So I won’t be able to refer to him by name in this review. The packets left at our stations were the internal use only packets so I know exactly where the class fell short. This is an aside, but it also had the specific sales pitches the teacher was supposed to be using which felt a little gross. I understand that a class like this cannot be every step by step due to timing but the teacher didn’t teach us anything. He had us put the steaks in a dry pan (I incorrectly trusted the process here, but the recipe that we got AFTER the class confirmed there should’ve been oil in the pan). He told one table, not the class, how long to sear the steaks for. We happened to overhear him speaking to another table. Because we had the internal packet, I saw that he was supposed to teach us about searing, about emulsifying a vinaigrette, about the texture of the mousse. He did none of this. He occasionally walked around and said “that looks good”. Like he said our pan sauce was good to go. We hadn’t even added the broth yet because our burner had shut off and we couldn’t get his attention to help on this. But he said that ours was done and good to go. How? I think the whole night could’ve been salvageable if the food were well-cooked. We got back into the room after the break and he announced that the steaks were cooked to a “perfect medium rare”. Absolutely not. I eat a lot of steak and this was RARE. Like purple rare. A lot of people in the class sent their steak to be cooked more. The potatoes were also so undercooked. I had to saw at it with a steak knife. I would never recommend this to anyone and will not be booking this class ever again.

Chef Shirley was great and very informative. The food was delicious. Our only suggestion would be to boil the Pappardelle in a pot as we did with the Farfalle. The Pappardelle turned to mush by cooking it in the sauce.