Chanterelle Cookery School

I have a Living Social coupon but have been unable to schedule a class since December. The phone number says not in service, the last class date listed on their site is for September and they don’t return e-​mails. Very disappointing as it sounded like a great idea when I purchased the gift.

I bought a groupon for one of their classes. It was not clear how to schedule a class, the website class schedule didn’t exist and at one point seemed out-​of-​date (in 2015 it mentioned October 2014 which might have been a typo, but the handful of classes that were there said «sold out» and it was from last month. A tried to call them several times and even left a voice mail, but even though I did that during their business hours, nobody ever picked up except the answering machine. Eventually I got a refund from Groupon. Good luck with that :)!

We attended the Street Food class a few weeks ago for my birthday. While the facility was very well appointed and in a lovely location, we felt that there were way too many students for the amount of space to cook, which didn’t give everyone an ample opportunity to take part in learning various techniques. My girlfriend barely got a chance to pick up a knife the whole time. Also they offered no snacks except water with lemon and there was an inordinate amount of waiting time in between food prep and the actual eating of what we made. We should have been able to eat an appetizer first much earlier on, then another course, and finally the last main course. At one point we were so hungry collectively that someone found a small container of chocolate chips and started distributing them among people in the class. At the very most in this size kitchen there should’ve been 6 – 8 people. There was no step-​by-​step guidelines for each recipe in in the booklet, so that we could take it home and replicate it. They should really advise all patrons to eat something before the class because they are going to be hungry and there’s not going to be a lot to do in the waiting periods while the food cooks. The chefs who organized the class seem to be in the initial learning stages of hosting these classes and they aren’t the best teachers yet, though they are personable and pleasant.

I signed up for the international street food class. It was a good experience and we had a fun time, however…
I know this place is new, so the instructors are also still learning the best way to go about conducting the class, but I think if I did not get the discount from groupon and paid $ 150 – 200 for this class I would have been very disappointed with the amount of hands on experience I got.
They were pretty disorganized with the steps for each recipe and with dictating who was going to do what, some people ended up doing a whole bunch of stuff, while others just chopped some vegetables and measured out spices. I would have wanted to feel like I was contributing to the whole meal, as opposed to a small part of ONE of the recipes we were making.
For the size of the kitchen, I think they need to make the class size way smaller, so people have a more hands on experience. The kitchen was way too small for the amount of people there. I felt like I was in the way at times, and felt I was standing around waiting for someone to tell me something to do. There was one point where we were all waiting around doing nothing.
I had fun, but the instructors need to find a better way to direct the class to give people a more hands on experience.