Sur La Table — Local services in Houston

I took the Build & Take: Luxe Layered Cake with Chef Mu class today and had a decent time, but there were definitely some issues. The class felt a bit hectic and disorganized. It would have been much more effective if Chef Mu had guided us through each step together, doing it alongside the class. Instead, each group was always on a different step, so he had to constantly repeat himself and people were constantly interrupting for more clarification, which made things a bit confusing.

One major concern was the recipe- our buttercream ended up with TEN sticks of butter, even though the printed recipe we received at the end listed five. We clearly doubled the butter but not the rest of the ingredients (like the egg whites- I'm 99% sure we had about 6 egg whites, but we should have had 12 if we were doing ten stick of butter), which seems to have thrown everything off. The end result was a cake that tasted overwhelmingly buttery- nearly inedible, unfortunately.

Also, I specifically chose the 9:00 AM session over the 1:00 PM because it was labeled for ages 14+, while the later class was for ages 7+. I was hoping to have a peaceful, focused experience with my mom for Mother’s Day without young kids who might not take the class seriously. Unfortunately, there was at least one child in the class who was clearly not 14, which was frustrating. If you're going to advertise an age requirement, it should be enforced.

Chef Mu was very kind and clearly knowledgeable, but the class wasn’t run as smoothly or calmly as others I’ve taken. Those felt peaceful and well-paced and this one felt more like controlled chaos. I still had a good time and would definitely take a class with Chef Mu again, but I wish the structure and age guidelines had been...

We signed up for this cooking class and it should have been told to us ahead of time that the food that we made in class would not be able to be brought home with us or we would have scheduled it for another day.

While I understand that they were unable to provide all of the ingredients to make them in you I guess because someone did not place the order correctly for provisions, the fact that we would not be allowed to bring home what we had made was not given to us either through the website, the ticketing process, the waiver we sign to cook in advance, or before beginning the class. I had a medical procedure which precluded me from being able to eat the night before. When booking it I just assumed we would bring home our items we had cooked and everything would be hunky-dory when I got home the next day from the hospital I would be able to eat our meal.

When I contacted the manager I was told that if it was a different class we would have been able to but that class we attended that made the lobster ravioli was unable to be taken out of the store due to their licensing.

These are all things that are easily handled as long as you clearly mark them on your website and ticketing information for the course but Sur La Table has been neglectful in their notifications on their website and will not give you this information so I am trying to share it with anybody who may be planning on taking a class.

We did purchase items with our 10% class discount and we are currently enjoying those...

Sales associates more busy chatting amongst themselves than assisting customers. Power cord to an appliance on display went missing and they did not even attempt to search for it in order to demonstrate how the appliance will work or appear when powered on. In the end, I was told to just look at the powerless electronic appliance and the box that it comes in. When I asked how does that model of the appliance compare to another model produced by the same brand but carried at a different store, the answer they gave me was: "That one is just $99, so that says it all." The powerless one we were looking at was $149, $49 more, but the $99 has been a best seller for years. I am not sure what kind of extra bells and whistles they wanted me to assume I can get from the extra $49. Sure, the cookware and tool they carry are great, they practically sell themselves. It makes me wonder what purpose does those sales associates serve then? Perhaps just to ring up the merchandise, that is after you have on your own figured out the answers to your questions and managed to track down the different pieces of the appliance in their store for them.

I figured their pretentious statement and behavior was not helpful at all, so I left and drove to the store in River Oaks Shopping Center, whose sales associates turned out way more courteous and helpful (went to the storage room to search for a power cord from another box, demonstrated the appliance, and answered my...