Collective Kitchen — Local services in Hillsboro

COOKING CLASS REVIEW: At first I wasn't going to write a review, but after sleeping on it and reminiscing on our experience last night I feel like I need to. I don't like to bash small businesses. I highly recomend scrolling down and reading the other 1-star reviews. They're spot on. And it looks like they've been offering these classes for several years and, in our experience, has only gotten worse. I'll keep this as kind and concise as possible, but this will be a long one. 1 - Environment. It was FILTHY. First of all, the room you're 'learning' in is essentially a mudroom, off of a main kitchen. Floors need mopping, walls are dirty, equipment is dirty. There's random equipment off to the side and a sink with an ineffective, dirty, old, nearly empty bottle of soap that I think was watered down. The lady bringing the food in (she is a contractor and apparently brings the food from her home, presumably) was late setting up and I noticed she was just wearing regular clothes and didn't wash her hands when she came in. She left her coat on. She was late setting up and I thought she was like a helper person. There are just tables pushed up against the wall, so you're facing the wall as you 'cook'. Really strange layout and not a great environment. 2 - Lack of hygiene. I mentioned the room was filthy, but the utensils we were handed to stir food with were also not clean. I don't know where they came from. The hot plates were filthy, like your old toaster or waffle iron that needs cleaning because it's got smears of old food, grease, flour, etc on them. I didn't even want to touch the buttons. I tried not to worry too much about it because we were making a stew and I knew we'd be cooking the food on hot temps. 3 - We didn't even learn to cook. We literally WATCHED the person cook the meal while she talked a bit about where she grew up. I'm not kidding, we didn't even cut a vegetable. Nothing was prepped into bowls for us to even dump in. She chopped stuff up at her table and carried them over to our pots. I thought we'd all be making the whole meal, but no. 2 groups made the meat dish while others sat and waited. Then when the meat was done, the other group made the vegetable portion. It was bizarre. We paid $80/person to WATCH someone else cook. And she wasn't even a professional. She wasn't demonstrating any techniques or anything. I was so annoyed the whole time. It's not like we were watching a professional chef. 4 - The food. I'm not going to comment on the recipe itself because I don't want to be rude to the person who led this class, but what bothered me most was that they brought raw chicken from somewhere, already chopped up. It was in a DIRTY COOLER that I initially thought was just holding ice and a container of milk. No, they pulled packages of raw chicken out of it! It was already chopped up and then shoved back into the plastic wrap of the original Tyson chicken package from the store. Again, I tried not to think about how unclean that is and remember we're cooking germs away with high temps (I think). It really bothered me though. And again, we paid $80 a person (so, $160 for both of us) and the meal itself was quite simple. It wasn't even like organic or rare. What were we paying for??? I personally didn't enjoy the food itself. I think mostly it just wasn't my style of food. I eat a lot of diverse foods, but this one is just not for me, or at least not this recipe. At the end, we ate some of the food off of paper plates and plastic cutlery while we sat on uncomfortable stools. It's not a pleasant environment and it was a little frustrating because a perfeclty good commercial kitchen and cute restarant was just steps away. Why couldn't we use that space? Lastly, there's no ventilation at all in the space. So, I would not recomend cooking down lots of onions. All our clothes, our hair, our bodies, our coats, and our car all wreak of onions. I was very disapointed and I hope the owner sees this and takes action to remedy all this, especially the...

I took the “High Tea class” and found it disappointing. I paid $50.00 to get a few recipes. This was a hands on class where you make the recipes. Mary Anne is a very nice and likable person but she lacks planning and organizational skills for teaching. Because she is such a nice lady I hesitated to write this review, but I hope it will help.There was nothing about tea or how to give a tea party. The instructor was very disorganized, she owns a catering company, It sounded by the way she spoke that it is successful. What companies like decadent creations need to remember is that because someone owns a successful business does not make them a good instructor. A suggestion would be to drop the banana pudding recipe and instruction for making a good pot of tea added. There should be tables set up to enjoy tea and the creations at the end. I’m skeptical to take any other classes after this experience. There was varnishing going on in the next room, the smell was over powering and bothered many of the clients. Seeing this was picnic tables for outside and this is winter could this not have been done at...

I took the Macaron baking class a few weeks ago and loved it! I know nothing about baking and was slightly nervous. But it was a very relaxed atmosphere. The host/baker was wonderful. Answers any and all questions. Explained everything in detail. We were given a very explicit recipe to take home along with the dozen macarons we had each made. This particular class the baker mixed the batter and filling for all the students. And we just had to build the macarons. It was a large class and I think if we had been making everything from scratch individually it would’ve taken way too long so I appreciated this group approach. I left inspired to bake them at home and felt like it was definitely an enjoyable class and well worth the price. Family friendly class for any level of baker. I would and have recommended this to friends. An added bonus the macaron recipe was gluten free!!! I think I ate one of the macarons and my husband ate the other 11! So yes, they...