The cooking classes with Chef Steve at the Adult Community Center in San Carlos are great. About 8…read morepeople per class, all different themes, on Wednesday nights. You can sign up through the San Carlos rec catalog. My husband and I have gone to a bunch as date nights and really enjoyed them. There's one every two weeks about. We started with a knife skills class and have done Cajun, Brazilian, Dim Sum, Moroccan, Greek, and Caribbean. All have been fantastic! We have learned so much and used the recipes at parties to much acclaim. Plus - they are only $42 per person for residents - what a deal!

Jillian prepares and presents meals that are extraordinary! Her reputation is legendary because she…read moreplans ahead to make sure everything you consume is aligned with your larger intentions. I could eat her meals everyday and live in bliss

Jillian is an amazing chef and a natural teacher. Love her!read more

My kid wanted to have a cooking party for his birthday. Both my kids are fans of Master Chef and…read moreall those cooking competition shows on tv. I found Junior Chef Stars on Yelp. We considered the competition in Ghiradelli Square but decided not to pursue it because it's located in a tourist trap and parking is horrible down there (I'm not schlepping all my food for adults on the bus). Initially it was difficult trying to schedule the party because most of the staff was running cooking summer camp. After I finally connected with someone, the planning was easy peasy. You select a class from their catalog online. They do everything for you. All you need to do is make sure the kids show up and you have food for the adults to eat. Brian and the team are great with the kids. A lot of them came away excited about cooking. They practiced knife skills, cooking on a portable electric stove plus making their own pasta from scratch. The staff is friendly and they didn't rush everyone to finish. Shop is located in a mall but it is inside the mall, not any of the stores facing the street. We circled the lot twice before we saw the signage. The kitchen was clean and bright. Free parking in the lot! We would definitely use Junior Chef Stars again.

It is very fun, you learn how to coooooook, it's very useful in life,workers are kind!read more

I cannot say enough great things about Jess! This past weekend she taught a class of 4 adults and…read more3 kids (of which one is a 3.5 year-old) in my mid-sized kitchen. She was extremely knowledgeable, patient, organized, and fun! Everyone had something to do, and everyone had a great time! I asked her to come on short notice, and she was very accomodating. She crafted a menu that included a vietnamese summer roll appetizer, two protein main dishes, two vegetable side dishes, and a salad. We all agreed that we never had such great summer rolls before, and the rest of the food was equally delicious. The flavor profiles of the dishes were complex, but not hard to make. She gave us all the know-how to prepare, cook and season the food properly. It was so fun to take a class, then enjoy the fruits of our labor. It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday night with family! Clean up was also a breeze. For a family of seven, including all the cookware, I only had to do one load of dishes in the dishwasher. I only washed the serveware and one non-stick baking dish by hand (my normal practice). I didn't even realize as we were cooking that Jess had been so efficient in her use of the cookware and bakeware. I think Jess would be helpful to anyone, skilled or not in cooking, who wants to learn how make a delicious meal in an efficient way. I will definitely be calling her again for more lessons, and I would recommend her to everyone!

My sweet, sweet boyfriend bought me three cooking lessons with Jess for Valentine's Day. She sent…read moreme a questionaire to fill out before our first session. She found out my strengths and weaknesses in the kitchen. She was wonderful! She came in, gave us a binder with all recipes and plans on how to overcome my challenges and gave us great, new, fresh recipes to try on our own. Not to fail to mention, all were very healthy! I even learned how to properly chop an onion! She has a great amount of knowledge of cooking and had answers to all of my questions. I'd highly recommend her for a special gift for someone, bachelorette party, or even just something fun to bring friends together and get them cooking!

Chef Cindy and Amy were wonderful hosts for my daughter's birthday party last summer. They put in…read moreso much care and effort to make sure every child had a meaningful role in preparing the food, which made the experience both fun and memorable. The party was a great success! Thank you as well for accommodating three different recipes--including a Michelin-star one. Highly recommend Chef Cindy!

Cindy's cooking school is top-notch. Both of my daughters REALLY enjoyed her classes and camps…read more They are fun and informative and they learned to cook! My younger daughter even tried out for Master Chef Junior when she was 12, fueled by the incredible confidence and skills obtained while under Cindy's tutelage! I also took a few of her adult classes and they were great too!

This was everything I could have asked for in a cooking class…read more The Mama Thai experience was a birthday present from my family for the four of us to do together. I have a decent amount of Thai cooking experience, while the rest of my family had none. Still, we all learned quite a bit, and had fun doing it! Jirayu has a beautiful home, and we immediately felt welcome and at ease. She's been doing this for more than 20 years. She and her daughter Saorise had stations set up for us, each with their own propane burner, tools, wok, and ingredients. We chose to make green papaya salad, red curry fried rice, and green curry eggplant with bamboo and rice noodles. After settling in, we started on the first of our dishes. We worked at a good pace, and Jirayu kept an eye on how we were doing, providing feedback where necessary. We made and ate each dish one at a time. It is an understatement to say that they turned out absolutely delicious! By the end of the first dish, we knew that we wanted to come back and do a few more menu items. Through each menu item, Jirayu talked about the brands she uses that have a more authentic Thai flavor. We talked about coconut milk, fish sauce, bamboo shoots, and palm sugar to name a few, and surprisingly some of the best brands were not Thai! She has also done her research on more healthy cooking, finding ways to omit MSG and unnecessary additives, and to make recipes more vegetarian-friendly. She herself is a pescatarian like me! One really neat trick that we learned is to use a juicer to make curry paste from scratch! If you've ever tried to make curry paste, it can be a long process with a mortar and pestle. I've take around 45 minutes to do it myself, and it makes for sore arm and hand muscles, for sure. For green curry paste, we spent probably five minutes using the juicer technique, and the results were amazing! We had plenty of extras to take home. Jirayu was also very generous with her time and answered so many of our questions. We even got to play with her dog, Ziggy!

When I heard we were doing another cooking class for a team activity in my mind I wanted to say not…read moreagain. But, Jirayu proved me wrong. Not only was her cooking class engaging, but she was knowledgeable, friendly, well prepared, had an awesome Chef's kitchen, and cleanliness was as important to her as it was to us. We came here for an off-site to do some team building like cooking. This is not my first cooking class, nor will it be my last, but this is definitely the best cooking class I've ever taken. And I've taken them all. I've taken Italian food cooking classes, dessert cooking classes, and your good old-fashioned American Cooking Class, but this one blew me away. I'm not going to lie, we had a busy group that had to take business calls and work inbetween cooking, and Jirayu took it all in stride. She even had a sense of humor saying we were the only group should have ordered three entrees without any dessert or appetizers LOL. Our first dish was spicy crab which was prepared fresh by us, but was chopped up and cleaned by her. Our next dish was the pad thai. Our third dish was chicken Pumpkin Curry. We were broken out in two teams of two, and each team would prepare its own meal. Not to brag or anything but we had the best Pad Thai, even the instructor said that. I also liked how the instructor accommodated a vegetarian in our class, and was able to accommodate people who liked Spicy Thai food on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 being wild and 10 being flaming hot. For those who wanted flaming hot our instructor was nice enough to take out some Chili's to make the dish extra extra spicy. She told us she does this as her full-time job, and I support her 100%. She's an awesome cook and a great instructor. Take her class you won't regret it!

Ever since buying a place a few years ago, I've wanted to learn how to cook. Not just to make it by…read morewithout starving, but really learn how to make quality food at home--I'm a foodie after all. ;-) This is the best cooking class company I've taken classes at to help me move closer to my goal. Highlights: - Format: A combination of demo and hands on which is the perfect mix: "see then do" as they say. Thorough and educational with detailed information on not only cooking techniques, but also the equipment (helpful gadgets in some cases), ingredients, their origins, and health benefits. I left each class feeling like I was becoming a more educated and better chef already. I've been to classes at Home Chef (when it was in SJ), Whole Foods (Cup and San Mateo), and Sur La Table (LG), and while those were fun, I didn't really learn as much as I would have liked. - Teacher: friendly, approachable, easy to learn from, comical, seems to genuinely care about her food and the people in her class, and knows her stuff. Chef Suzanne Vandyck has the culinary credentials and has even authored a cookbook. She tells you little tricks here and there along with fun stories of her travels and related eats to give it a personal touch. - Environment: very casual and comfortable. Questions are encouraged throughout and you don't feel intimidated chiming in with one during the demo or while cooking. I've been to classes where you felt like you were learning from a cooking nazi: if you didn't use the right spoon or something she'd snip at you. I want to learn, but this is for fun. I like more hakuna matata attitude here. As Chef Suzanne says, "In a restaurant it has to be perfect, at home it's ok." :-) - International Themes: I took the Easy and Healthy Japanese cooking class but they offer Italian, French, Mediterranean, Spanish, etc. I was a bit weary of learning Japanese food from a lady from Belgium, but she had enough traveling, visiting with locals, eating, and cooking experience to portray the authentic styles. I lived in Japan for a few years and eat Japanese food a good deal and learned tons from her class. - Great recipes: everything that we made was scrumptious. I loved being able to know how to make the classic Japanese sauces (tempura, miso, etc.) There are always options either written down or noted verbal during the demo so you know how you can change it up to suit your tastes or ingredients you have handy. - Salads: when you sign up, you can see what dishes will be made and I was enticed by the entrees. After all was said and done I did enjoy the entrees like expected, but was surprised to be blown away by the salads. The watercress and then spinach salads with dressings we made on our own were amazing. - Recipe handouts: before class you get a few pages stapled together of the recipes of the day. The teacher not only includes pictures up top, but a nice little paragraph of the story and background about what the dish is. - Plating: after Chef Suzanne makes an item, she plates them on beautiful little authentic Japanese plates (since I took the Japanese class) and organizes the food so it looks professional and impressive. Since I want to be a Top Chef quality chef, I love learning these plating skills to make my dishes visually appealing and fancier than the average home cooked meal. 8-) - Leftovers: sometimes there's a lot of food, so if you bring a container you can take some to enjoy at home - People: After the demos we break up into groups and make a few recipes. I didn't take the class to meet new people, but I made some nice friends through the few sessions we've have. - Class time said 6-9:30pm which I was initially worried sounded a bit long, but we usually finished by 9 or earlier so I could make it home to watch Grey's just slightly delayed on TiVo. ;-) - Location: most of the quality classes I have seen are in the city which is hard to get to on a weeknight. These are held closer to home in Cupertino and Santa Clara. Lowlights (my flip side to highlights): - How much fun you have cooking depends on the group you end up in--just normal group dynamics and personalities, etc. - Not optimal equipment: this is where it's a pro to go to a specialty store like Sur La Table or Whole Foods: the equipment will be more top notch. Our class was at Cupertino High School which had dull knives, old silverware, etc. They also didn't have any chopsticks to use in our Japanese class, so we brought our own. - Sometimes she changes the recipe from what's written down so you just have to be aware and take notes on your handouts. - Some classes you get a snack pretty early on but others you don't get to eat until 8:30pm, so you may want to have a snack before just in case. I'm so happy to have found this cooking school and will be looking to take more classes in the future!

Highly recommend Chef Suzanne and Worldchefs International!…read more I've taken Italian cooking classes, garlic cooking classes and a team-building cooking class. All spectacular... Highlights of courses: *Picked up FANTASTIC recipes that I still cook today... *Learned how to use quality ingredients to make delicious dishes *Met some great people *Paid close to nothing to learn from a top-notch chef and her colleagues Minuses: *May be challenging if you are with a group of people whom are unaccustomed to being in the kitchen... Favorite dishes that I still cook today zuppa di ceci (Italian garbanzo bean soup), pizza margherita, paella (Spanish rice dish), chicken marsala, risotto, minestrone soup, non-alcoholic sangria, and flourless chocolate cake.

Great recipes and wonderful cooking videos. individual support is available and encouraged. I…read morejoined 3 weeks ago. As suggested I took it slow- one recipe at a time, watched the videos and really started to follow my plan this week. I have been stuck at a certain weight for ever, and finally dropped below that # this week by 2 pounds. this is a lifestyle not a diet. My husband also loves the recipes.

Such a fun and educational experience. As soon as you walk in everyone makes you fell welcomed, you…read moreare not being judged, everyone is there to learn how to cook. No previous cooking experience needed what so ever. Class is great for all levels: beginners, pros, never touched a knife before type of people. Class is fun and energized... I was somewhat skeptical at first but by the end of the class all I wanted to do was go home and cook some more. You start off by an introduction of the class and what they are all about. Then they explain to you the layout of the kitchen and what 3 recipes you will cook that day. You work off your cooking station and in designated teams. They teach you safety tips and tricks while you cook. The class I attended was great.... They are all about healthy cooking with healthy ingredients. Only downside is pricing.... Average about $50-$60 per class, once a week, 5 or 10 week programs offered. That unfortunately is a bit much for my wallet but like I said its worth it if you can afford it. . Great place to go with friends for a night out.