Baltimore Chef Shop — Attraction in Baltimore

I attended the pizza, calzone, and stromboli class on December 2nd, 2018 at 2:30pm. The class was going okay in the beginning. We weren't given much instruction, which was fine because the paper instructions were easy to follow. As we move along I kept saying to myself how will we finish everything, we're moving a little slow. With 1.5hrs left our instructor began to buckle down, rush us, and became frustrated. Whenever she did demos (about 3 or 4) the whole class she did them at the front table. My table (the back) began saying maybe she likes the front table better. The instructor got the dough for the front table and separated it, then asked everyone to gather to learn how to make the stromboli. She made the entire stromboli then literally shoo'd us away and told us, now go and make your stromboli. We didn't have the cutter for the dough, she didn't show us how to cut it, and we didn't have the baking sheets we needed to even make the stromboli. So we all stood dumbfounded and waited for her to come back to our table. Instead she stayed at the front table and made their calzone and another stromboli for them. We then ask the assistant for the cutter. No one still knew how to cut the dough. She then comes over and tells us that we need to hurry up because we don't have much time. I say we don't even know how to cut up the dough. You didn't show us. So she cuts it up and helps us make the stromboli then tells us to hurry up again and then goes back to the front table. They have their stromboli, calzone, and pizzas done while we're still working on the calzone. We weren't even following the instructions by the "T" so we had to stop and keep asking which parts needed to be skipped. She comes over and tells us we did the calzone wrong and needed to put it on the baking sheet 1st like she told us in the instructions. Mind you we didn't have a baking sheet. Not sure what happened with that as both groups at each table were assigned two things. My group had the stromboli and margherita pizza. She now fixes the calzone and walks away again. So we start working on the pizza ourselves. I followed the instructions and put the sauce on after she brought us the pans we needed to make the pizza. The mozzarella is on so we only needed the pizza in the oven. So we wait. The team across from us at our table starts the white sauce pizza. She comes over and asks what we're waiting for and says we don't have time. We said we were done and just needed the pizza to go in the oven. She proceeds to show the white sauce group how to apply the sauce to the pizza and then tells us we did ours wrong and put too much sauce and puts her hand in the middle of our pizza and says she told us not to do it that way. At this point I'm done keeping quiet and I say something. I'm an adult and I didn't pay $70/pp to be talked to this way. So I say I think you skipped us on that part. You've been at the front table so I'm sure you didn't explain that part to us. She claims she did. I reminded her that she did not. Then she tries to say she just showed us with the white sauce. I kindly remind her that the red sauce pizza was already done by then. So I start taking the sauce off with a spoon, she then snatches the spoon from my hand. At this point I'm done. I tell her she hasn't been paying our table any attention and I'm not the only person at the table that feels this way. My boyfriend was upset that she kept rushing us. We had to wait for more space to free up before cooking our pizzas. At this point the front table is eating. Someone from my table says to them, you guys were quick. They said yea, because she did it all for us. Which we could see with our own eyes. I thought it was very unprofessional to get flustered and be rude. We were all pretty calm in the class and tried to be independent as possible. I can be 100% independent at home in my own kitchen as I already am. Didn't need to pay to be treated that way. Our food came out okay. It...

Took a macaron class at Baltimore Chef Shop and it was underwhelming. I have read Reddit posts and watched YouTube videos that were clearer and gave better technique and troubleshooting tips. Would have given 2 stars but saw another reviewer recently gave two stars for a macaron class that didn't have a demo or enough of the ingredients, so felt I should add a star since our class at least had that.

To begin with, the class started a full half an hour late and ended about 45 minutes late (and this is a 3 hour commitment to begin with) and with the group talking about how powdered sugar is like the herpes of the culinary world (tacky). Both tables were separately saying this (and it's something I have never read or come across in all my baking research) so I don't know if this came from the staff.

Mainly the three stars is because I did not think the chef that taught my class was particularly good at teaching, communicating, or keeping an eye on what was going on. For some types of classes, maybe a group of 12 is fine, but for a class so focused on technique, it might have been good to have a smaller group or a sous-chef.

The cons. In general, I did not get the impression that macarons were the chef's area of specialty. The recipe came not in weight but by cups and when I asked about this, the chef stated that it was not her recipe (it was the owner's). The chef also did not explain much in the way of troubleshooting (for instance, why some people's macaron attempts might have failed in the past or what to do if you are working in a very hot or humid environment). Some of this information was transmitted piecemeal later on - when my table's batches stuck to the parchment paper and came out hollow, she guessed that they might have needed more time to dry. At one point, the chef deviated from the recipe, which was fine as the recipe was painfully under-detailed and oversimplified; however, she did not explain that she was deviating or why, so this led to some confusion. She did not catch a lot of the mistakes people were making. She didn't notice, for instance, that the ladies who were making our lemon curd filling had not done it properly until after they had finished making it (luckily, it didn't matter much once the butter was mixed in with an emulsion blender). She also didn't notice that two members of the group were working on individual batches of chocolate ganache (not that this was a problem to the macarons, just an indication she had no clue what was going on at our table). At one point, one of the people at my table called her friend's technique "chaotic" and I thought that was a pretty good description of the class at large.

The group itself was also quite mixed in terms of skill, experience baking, and genuine desire to learn technique (and I recognize this is not something Baltimore Chef Shop can control). The members of the other table seemed to be more attentive and collaborative. The people at my table seemed to be more focused on chatting than learning (the reason why the lemon curd didn't come out right as it was not whisked continuously) and some quite defensive when corrected (for instance, when making the syrup for the buttercream, my partner did not appreciate being told she should not stir the sugar and water mixture while it was heating). The class is a bit of a crapshoot in terms of who you end up with; for certain types of classes, it might not matter, but it certainly did for this class and did not result in an enjoyable experience.

I took this class because a friend of mine took a macaron class at Sacre Sucre and really enjoyed it. She shared that recipe with me and it was in weight with more precise instructions. I would probably recommend to anyone considering a macron class to look into Sacre Sucre (or Sur la Table in DC) for what seems like a more professional and...

If you read the "lowest rating" reviews in order, excluding the ones about cancellations and covid policies, from people who actually attended classes here, they say exactly what I experienced tonight. I wish I had read those earlier... it seems like this lack of communication by the business is common, and their responses to low reviews are that they'll try to make it clearer online, but that doesn't seem to have changed in 3+ years. I think the issue is that they use the word "class" and "instruction", when that is not what their business is about.

Overall, it was an interesting experience, but in no way worth the $90 per person cost, and my fingertips are still burning after despite washing them repeatedly during the class and soaking them in olive oil to dissolve the capsaicin from cutting thai chili peppers without gloves (despite the recipes emphasizing use of gloves, but when I and others asked, we were told there weren't any gloves). I figured washing my hands well after would work (like I do with serranos) but they are on fire 2 hours later.

Separate from that, the chef (instructor) and assistant tried to be helpful, but it was clear that they have never made the recipes themselves- the recipes came from the owners, and the staff buys the ingredients but the instructions have mixed terminology/ingredients such that the chef and assistant weren't always sure what was intended. Working with 4 other people we'd never met- who were all amazingly wonderful and friendly and competent humans, thank goodness- some of which none of us had ever prepared like lemongrass (with no up front instruction)- made it stressful especially at the end. We were expected to take 6 pages of recipes without any instruction plus an oddly cobbled together flow chart, and work as a team, without any time to read or strategize how to do so... I could have done that at home with friends for way cheaper and way less stressful... given there was no real instruction provided. The meal did come together in the end, but I think we all were tired from the experience and wanted to get home.

I felt bad for people spending that time to celebrate their birthday or (for me) with rare time with a loved one, as the instruction was primarily about dicing onions and bell peppers (most of us know how?), and how to roll a spring roll, also something I think most of us know. I did learn how to peel ginger easily, that was neat, but overall it just felt sloppily put together, and the business seems to be run by owners who don't host the classes themselves, but bring in chef instructors to run classes on recipes they haven't had the time to look over or make themselves. I don't really blame the instructors or staff for this, but the management/owners (who I never met!) who decide how their business is run. If it was a $15 class, I'd shake it off, but I expected a lot more for the price paid. As an educator, I don't write this to throw the chef or assistant under the bus, I think they did their jobs as hired to do by management, in retrospect... but it was more a support role they played in a stressful weird team building experience with strangers (not a cooking class), instead of instruction in how to cook certain dishes which is what I thought I was...