Sur La Table — Local services in Glendale

I sent this feedback in an email to the owner and also tried to escalate the issue through Sur La Table CS, however it’s been well over a month and I have heard nothing back from anyone regarding my want for a refund. Below is the feedback and the awful experience we had at a the ‘Date Night Bourbon Steak Dinner’ 10/21 @ 4 pm. This was part of our 10 year wedding anniversary celebration. We had previously taken a cooking class in MN and had enjoyed it and thought if this was similar it’d be fun.

The purpose of a cooking class is to receive instruction from a person who is knowledgeable so that we can learn key takeaways and be able to recreate the same recipes at home. This class was disappointing for the following reasons:

1. Instructor: She lacked the ability to teach others which is crucial when put in a position of teaching. She’d often gave partial verbal instruction and then point out when something wasn’t done correctly- yet what she was pointing out wasn’t a part of her verbal instruction in the first place. It would have helped had we had the recipes at the table with us to view. The instructor did not project her voice so it was hard to hear what next steps were or what we should be doing.

2. Size of class: We were fully prepared to be at a table and preparing dishes with others in the class, according to the website it should have been groups of 4. We were often paired with another entire table, so groups of 8 were working on 1 dish. This left little for each person to do taking away from what hands experience was had.

3. Steak: Given this class was sold as a date night and cost $89.00 per person, $178.00 in total, and it was during dinner we would have thought that the steak we were preparing would be one for each person. This was not the case, not only was it never mentioned by the instructor what cut of steak we were using but it was also glazed over that each table of 4 would be splitting 2 steaks. You don’t even get your own! It was almost comical how small the steaks were that our table got, as another table had steaks that were twice the size of ours (easily 2.5 inches thick). The instructor gave minimal direction on how to cook the steaks, I noted that the written instructions were not followed when she finally handed them out at the end of the class - items which are somewhat basic but not followed by the instructor. She thought our steak was complete (aiming for medium doneness) however she took it off and immediately cut it open, discovered it was rare, put it back on 2 more times and continued to cut it open. Didn’t bother temping it with a thermometer and gave complete disregard to letting the steak rest.

4. Whipped cream for the pumpkin mousse: Lacking good instructions from the instructor a fellow student in the class followed the verbal directions of adding the ingredients to a bowl and whisking. The instructor didn’t coach what stiff peaks were so the participant didn’t even know how to identify that they had over whipped the cream. The instructor identified that the cream had broke. She made the statement and moved on, the cream wasn’t remade or any time spent coaching the class on this learnable moment. The true cost to have remade this part of the dessert would have been minimal to Sur La Table, instead it was just something we went without.

Again, we were very disappointed with this “class” which it failed to be a learning experience - there was no teaching being done it was a person (whom I am honestly not quite sure if she as even a chef?) reading partial instructions from a piece of paper while the class struggled to follow along.

As my husband and I discussed the experience we felt it was necessary to provide feedback on this. I am looking for someone to take initiative and contact me about this and address my wanting for a refund BUT haven’t been able to get anyone to...

DO NOT RECOMMEND their cooking classes. I went there on New Year’s Eve (12/31/24) with my husband for a cooking class and we were horrified with the POOR HYGIENE PRACTICES of the instructor. One of the students accidentally dropped one of the steaks on the floor, and the instructor said “Don’t worry, this one hasn’t been cooked yet. We have extras, and I’ll just eat this one” and he put it back on the tray with the others (STRIKE 1). Later, after they came out of the oven, another steak was dropped. The same instructor grabbed the steak from the floor with tongs, put again back with the other steaks and again said he’d eat that one as well. I looked at that steak and I could see a white hair sticking out of it. I thought it was absolutely disgusting, but I thought I’d trust the instructor to know which steaks fell on the floor (STRIKE 2). Later, he just put all the steaks in the same sauce (STRIKE 3). Then, when he was plating the steaks, my husband noticed the instructor lost track of which steaks fell on the floor or not and he accidentally sent the ones that fell for the students to eat. (STRIKE 4). When the salad was being prepared, the instructor grabbed a package of Trader Joe’s romaine lettuces, grabbed one romaine lettuce, broke it in his hands and put it into the salad WITHOUT WASHING. I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and grabbed the package hoping to read “pre-washed” but it wasn’t. It said in the instructions to “wash the whole heart” (STRIKE 5). Also, the cherry on the top of this fiasco: they don’t let you eat what you prepared. They just mix everything in the end and most of the time you get something the other group prepared. This ruins the whole purpose of learning from your mistakes in a cooking class and it’s also nasty, cause most of the people there didn’t seem to have washed their hands before starting the food preparation, and at no point they were instructed to (STRIKE 6). We are in the middle of a norovirus outbreak, how the hell do you serve people food that was on the floor, where multiple people stepped on multiple times? How can you serve people unwashed lettuce? Are you trying to infect your students with listeria? All of these are severe food safety violations that should be reported to the DATCP. We paid $90 per person to eat half a steak (yes, they don’t even give you a full one) that could have touched the floor, the most flavorless mashed potatoes I’ve ever had in my life (because of course they didn’t let us have the one our group prepared), and unwashed salad (which I obviously refused to try). DO BETTER!!! Never taking a class at Sur La...

For Christmas for my wife, I ordered a date night cooking class from Sur La Table in Glendale,WI. This would have been the third class my wife and I have taken. I ordered it two months in advance and took advantage of a 10% discount. 10 days before the event I got a phone call that they had decided to book a private party and cancel everyone in the class. So to be clear, Sur La Table chose a few extra dollars from a last minute private party over honoring their previous commitments. I was offered to be moved to the 4pm class. Not exactly date "night" or a time I want to stuff myself with steak and lobster. So I had the website up and said no problem, I'll pick a class on another day. I was told "our reservation system doesn't work that way." You were about to move me to another class, and now you can't. I was told I had to cancel and rebook. I asked about the 10% discount I booked under and was told nothing could be done about it. I was then told if I felt this wasn't an adequate solution I could email customer service. I have two emails to customer service and nothing but the automated "someone will be in touch with you as soon as possible."

I find the lack of communication from rather frustrating. I was hoping for some solution where Sur La Table would honor my initial 10% off if I rebook. Not even issued an apology. This...