New Zealand School of Food and Wine — Local services in Waitematā

Doesn't even deserve a one star for the low class service they gave us and the way they treated. We paid for the barista course and we planned my week schedule with my employer and got permission to leave one week early from work arranged another staff to work instead of me and went their for the course on s4th of June 2019 at 4.30pm and they told me that the "classes are cancelled and sorry for the inconvenience"and we can't run the class with one student. further the guy went on and said, all they can do is a refund and they didn't acknowledge the fault or neither offer me an appology in a proper manner. Attitude was totaly arrogant and ignorant. He further stated that was a systems fault not sending the email to me informing the class cancellation, when I have even emailed the staff (as soon as I made the the payment) a week before the class date and they didn't even reply to that. When I was asking about that the white tall guy ( saw him on the website picture doing some lectures to wine classes watch out) told me she gets thousands of email per day and she can't email everyone? what a stupid answer he gave me and made me even worse and I asked for a refund and simply he said yes it will take five working days and someone will get in touch with you and I demanded them to do the transfer and lady emailed their accounts and till now they haven't processed my refund. What a irresponsible organisation in the education industry. I wonder how they teach their students to do the customer service when they can't even provide the customer service. Note that I was arranging a baby sitter and I traveled all the way from Mangere to the town at 3.30 pm and got to the city just before 4.30pm and got me another two hours to get back as the class was cancelled. It was such a bad experience and I don't want any other customers to get this bad experience. Please stay away from this place and find some other better education providers. What a shame to have these kind of institute in...

A couple of friends and I went to the Artisan Breadmaking Course - Oct 31,20. I went with the sole purpose of refining my sourdough and breadmaking skills in general. I did exactly that and learned lots of new things.

Des the tutor was really personable and it was his first time teaching the programme. He was using another tutor’s recipes and hadn’t trialled them beforehand. A pity because the sourdough was just too difficult to work with (too high a ratio of whole-wheat flour) which meant we had to take home an unproofed loaf that had been handled too much and that baked a frisbee the next day instead of a boule. The other breads, the rolls, ciabatta and challah were great. The recipes provided had been ‘doctored’ to work quickly for the day... ie more yeast added to make it possible to make so much bread in one day. It would have been good to see recipes returned for a normal day’s baking.

There were 15 of us in the class, there was a helper to wash dishes, weigh flour etc (👏) but there could have been more bowls, and a dough scraper (an essential tool for bread making) for each person.

I was happy with the programme; we made a lot of bread in a very short time, we worked with some very wet dough and we learned a lot. We ate our own rolls for lunch, with cheese, pesto etc provided by NZSF&W. Perhaps if you were a beginner you might be a bit overwhelmed. Lots to learn and you go home exhausted... lots of kneading, little time for...

I was in the first advanced class at the Auckland campus. Although it was an interesting transition to the new building, Celia was exceptionally accommodating. We partook in exclusive event wine tastings, had a judge from Master Chef complete a demonstration, and most importantly, made a lot of amazing food. Our unit on lamb was especially exciting as Celia had fresh lamb quarters shipped up from her farm on the South Island. We went from deboning to plate, using every cut and sweetbread possible. As an international student, the school was helpful in getting the necessary documents for me to apply for my visa. After graduating, I secured a position working with a 3 time nominated James Beard Award chef. Although I am no longer in the food industry, I'm still able to pick out great wines and compose meals that...