Sur La Table

I was overjoyed when I heard that Sur La Table was coming to the Meridian Village. I’ve shopped in this store in several different cities and I’m always amazed at the variety of cookware, utensils, appliances, and just about everything one needs in the kitchen. The other plus about this store is that it accommodates every price range. It’s not a specialty store, it really caters to people who enjoy cooking but don’t want to spend a fortune. That’s not to say that there aren’t pricey items to buy there — –take for instance the coffeemakers. When you enter the Meridian store often times a salesperson will offer you a cup of coffee. More than likely it’s from the top model barista style espresso machine which will run over $ 1,000! But never mind there are other models that are less expensive. At any rate, I’m glad this store is here and I’ve already made several purchases. I’m also considering a cooking class here and there are many from which to choose. It’s also just fun to browse and see the latest offering in cooking gadgets!

I took a cooking class from Chef Daisy and it was outstanding. She is a rockstar and the kitchen area in the back looks like it’s straight out of America’s Test Kitchen.
The menu we cooked was really tasty and I learned a lot during the 2 hour class. I feel more confident in my cooking and picked up some tips to improve my knife skills.

Great place to get all your kitchen gadget needs. little more higher end stuff but well worth the price IMO. They also offer cooking classes for adults and kids and do special occasion cooking classes. Staff seem very knowledgeable on there products which is good when your spending that kind of money.

Tonight I took my date to a Tuscany themed cooking class. I was super stoked because I have always wanted to try one of these, but never took the opportunity.
The dinner had us making several different segments of the meal. A salad, risotto, some sort of topping for the pork, and an amazing lemon desert.
First let me describe what I was disappointed with. It’s not much, but it did have me wanting more. We did most of the prep work for our given meal, but the only thing I truly feel like we made from start to finish was the salad and risotto. The lemon dessert was finished while we ate the main course and the pork was cooked without us doing anything. We just put salt and pepper on it. I’d like more hands on, especially since there were only 4 of us total.
Other than that it was great. The food was awesome and gave me confidence that I could make this at home. The cooking instructor was clear on how to prepare everything, but he didn’t offer tips or instruction on how to do certain things. (Knife skills in particular.) I still had a grea time and I think it’s a unique date that many people would enjoy. Would go again but probably not for a bit.

Well, you pay for quality, I will say that. I’ve gotta some baking dishes, towels, and some kind of noodle making contraption here and it has all worked out great. The stuff here is quality, but dang if it isn’t expensive. But quality and buy once as they say. They have everything your kitchen needs and also some bar stuff.

This place is just cool. We always stop by and shop when we go to the Village. They have just about everything the home (or professional) cook would ever want or need, including classes for those that can burn water.
We’ve bought a couple things from here, including some baking sheets and a silicon dough mat. Most everything here seems to be of high quality. Lots of name brands and a few I’ve never heard of. The staff has always been very nice, and will make you a cup of coffee from their machine that you can take home for a cool $ 3600. Last time we were there, the staff let us (and about 20 others) stay and shop for nearly an hour after they closed without saying a word. I thought that was pretty cool.
Prices here are a little higher than average, but what I would expect from a shop of this type in the Village. However, I much prefer the charm of this place over their competitor in the mall whose name sounds like Williams-​Sonoma. Check out their cooking class schedule in the front window left of the front door.

I fell in love with Sur La Table — literally «on the table — when I lived in Seaside, on the north Oregon coast, in the early 1990s and made infrequent trips to Seattle. At the time, Sur was still a one-​store empire at 84 Pine Street and still owned by founder Shirley Collins.
Sur was famous for having a ton of gadgets, lime reamers, garlic mincers and Silpat no-​stick baking liners. They also carried Cuisinart food processors, the exclusive distributor for many years in the U.S. Noted cilantro hater Julia Child stopped in whenever she was in Seattle.
Sur is now owned by a global investment bank — Bahrain-​based Investcorp. The company has continued its expansion, allowing Treasure Valley shoppers to enjoy Sur in person.
This store is smaller than the Seattle flagship store and shops in Portland and its Tigard suburb. Even so, it has a large selection of those same gadgets as well as baking and stove-​stop pans, coffee and espresso makers, and dishes. The staff is friendly and helpful, the same as in the other stores I’ve shopped at.
I’m also glad to see they included a cooking class kitchen. Sur La Table stores in other cities have a wide selection of cooking classes that they offer regularly. Classes are held both on weeknights and on weekends. Three sessions were offered on the Saturday that I visited: Desserts, family meals and date night meals.

Top notch friendly servfice from everyone in this store, the very nice guy who is manager and all on the floor and behind the counter, made my hubby and me fans on our first ‘look see’ visit. Although I lived in Seattle way back in the day when Sur La Table was launched there as first location and we shopped at Sur La Table in Berkeley when we lived near there for many years and once in a while popped into the SLT in Potland, I have become more a Williams Sonoma fan (atic) in the last twenty. Now I see opportunity to move Meridian’s SLT into first place for local kitchen items shopping.
FANTASTIC CUSTOMER SERVICE
The quality of service here is the differentiating factor for why we would go back here over their competitiors. Not that the new store isn’t delightful all on it’s’ own, it is, but the people here make it really special. They could answer our questions and make feature /​function recommendations from things as simple as potato ricers ($ 30) to espresso makers ($ 1300) under consideration for a new kitchen. The latter discussion even came with a demo and a free espresso to boot.
We popped in to pick up one small thing as we had time to spare before meeting friends for lunch. We walked out with a shopping bag full of treasures. It was the service that led us to want to do that and the fact that the store was…
…EASY TO NAVIGATE:
The space is well laid out with ample room in between aisles, it is brightly li, well organized and the ambiance is welcoming. I hope they can keep it that way has some Sur La Table stores, Portland”s Pearl as example, are nearly impossible for getting through the aisles… which means I leave.
PRICES:
Prices are on par with their competition for similar kitchen tools and items. Some food products are also carried here and you’ll likely pay quite a bit more here than other retailers for similar items. (We comparison shopped, for example, the brand of organic California Olive Oil we often buy as well as a specific salt we use and both were a good 40% more here than what we pay elsewhere.)
COOKING CLASSES:
Cooking classes are offered here in a roomy, state of the art kitchen. They are not inexpensive, most it seems around $ 69 /​each. But they are hands on, last 2 to 2 ¹⁄₂ hours and you get to eat what you cook at the end of class. (Plus they do the dishes. Nice!) A class schedule is published for the current month and the one upcoming. You can pick up copies in the store or likely find them online too. And it seems in Meridian right now, given the store is newly opened, some of the regularly priced at $ 69 classes are being offered for under $ 10 as «special offers». (As you might imagine, those filled up fast.)
UNIQUE GIFT IDEA:
Gift certificates are available for the cooking classes. With classes from knife skills to macaron baking to soups to «date night» meals, there is something for every cook or wannabe.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Level in and throughout. Ample space between aisles. Works as well for the mom pushing a stroller inside or an older gentleman using a wheelchair, both of whom were shoppers and buyers on the day of our visit.
LOCATION:
In The Village Mall in Meridian (right across from Grimaldi’s and the fountain) that mall seems a love it or hate it locale. So that is what it is.
LIMITED TIME SPECIAL OFFER WITH PURCHASE:
How long this will go on I do not know, but on the day of our visit there was a special offer of a free year’s subscription to a Travel publication with a minimum $XX.00 purchase.

If you ever hear a chef or serious home cook say something like, «I’m going to the playground,» chances are that they’re headed to Sur La Table (or a similar store). But instead of coming home with a scraped knee or bump on the noggin, it’s a scraped credit card or bump in the check book. Either way, the damage is nominal.
You’ll survive to play another day.
The unique attraction here is the cooking classes. And while I haven’t yet (keyword: yet) participated in any of them, word on the street is that they’re lots of fun.
My personal experience is that of «needing» (and I put that in annoying air quotes, because my definition might be different than yours) a set of bowls and dessert plates.
Simply put, this was a case of buy now and apologize later. As a former chef, who was having dinner guests over THAT night, I had a vision for presentation. And to be caught without the proper canvas for my art constituted an extreme emergency!
So while I didn’t require any assistance in finding what I came for, there was sufficient staff on hand helping other patrons.
Anyway, over a hundred bucks later… aside from my «needed» merchandise, I also got a free measuring conversions refrigerator magnet and free knife sharpening for a year.
Justification enough for me.
Good thing I kept my virtual blinders on, because had I explored the rest of the store, I’d be still sleeping on the couch.
Since Sur La Table is still quite the novelty in The Village, I anticipate that you’ll find it to be quite crowded through the holidays. So come, but come with a mission, and account for the extra time it’ll take at checkout.
In fact, checkout is the only downfall that I could find here. The island is situated in a way that impedes the flow of traffic in that portion of the store. Also, its limited registers (only 2, if memory serves me) will cause you to wait a while longer as the cashier wraps up my fragile purchases.