This is a review of the school and not their restaurant…read more If you are really serious about becoming a chef or a pastry chef, think twice and think again before coming here. This place is like the Wal-Mart of culinary schools. The school admits anyone who has a heartbeat, meaning they only want the money. The curriculum sucks and looks like they need to revamp the program. Also the equipment is old has hell and the kitchens are dirty. For the money you will be investing (@20K), you are better off going to the CIA in NYC or French Culinary School.

I had the pleasure of dining at the colleges restaurant (lumiere) last night. The cuisine was…read moreWONDERFUL. I myself played it on the safe side. Fried Oyster appetizer, ceasar salad, chicken breast entree and creme brule for dessert. And there was hardly anyone there. If you are in the area go if you can.

I came as a part of a work (corporate) group for Paella and Sangria making. I love both those…read morethings so I was excited to make and even more so to try our creations! Haha. Overall, it was a good experience. I felt our instruction was detailed between explaining the why behind steps and demonstrating. We got a lesson in knife skills that was cool. Dishes made: -Paella (chicken and a meatless version for our vegans) -Tortilla chips -Pico de gallo -Guacamole -Sangria My only con was that we started late (more than 20 mins) so there was a lot of waiting around at first. I undetstsnd things can happen which is why thebexprrienfe was overall fun and positive. Once we got going, the pace stayed at a steady flow and we were not rushed out at the end. Would recommend if you're in the Atlanta area. The next group after us was also a corporate event, so I'd say the setup works particularly well for that (groups less than 15).

Came here with my colleagues for a team-building class and it was a blast! We made pasta! It was…read morefun to make everything from scratch, including all the veggies that went into the sauce. Our instructor was so entertaining, southern, and sassy (his words lol). He was really patient with some of the people in our group who weren't as experienced in the kitchen and gave tons of tips along the way. I'm not sure it was relaxing haha, but a group of 20 making pasta and sauce from scratch is almost guaranteed to be a chaotic good time. I recommend this for work teams, families who want a group activity, couples, friend groups, or even solo. I'd love to go back and try another cuisine class - there are so many to choose from! Plus there's a drag brunch option that our instructor teaches, which is probably really fun too.

I love the awesomeness that is Nicholas Lodge and the cakers in this city are lucky to have him,…read morehis school and his cake shop here. It's one of two cake supply stores (of decent quality) in the metro area and my favorite to go to. For one, the pricing isn't too bad. Most of my supplies I get online from various places but if I'm in a bind and need something quick or it will work out to about the same if I ordered online (and added in shipping), I will happily trek up to ISAC. They have a good selection of molds, boxes/boards/drums, color dusts, fondant and candy making supplies. During the holidays (and Easter), there is usually an Open House where Chef Nick, Scott and others will have various demos going on and you can sample some goodies. I've yet to take a class but can't wait to. Time to sharpen the some skills!

Ok, so, I totally disagree on ISAC needing to be bigger. They have, or will order for you, anything…read moreyou could possibly need. What you are seeing, once you enter the extremely clean, attactive and well-organized store, is the best of the best. They've done away with the cheesy cake kits and plasticky walmart make-your-own-cake gunk. This place if for folks, professional or amateur, that want their end result to look professional. I do agree the staff is awesome. Helpful, friendly, welcoming. God Bless them they are never pushy. They also have the best box and board prices short of ordering your own mega-quantity

Salud! Cooking School is a chain of cooking schools located inside certain Whole Foods Markets. At…read morethe time of writing this review, there are two in the Atlanta area: this location at the Whole Foods at Avalon in Alpharetta and another in Duluth/Johns Creek. I've taken classes at both locations. There are also locations in Charlotte, Memphis, and Nashville. For a friend's birthday, my friends and I participated in the class entitled "Divine Doughnuts with Dutch Monkey" on March 11, 2018. This was a doughnut-making class conducted by chefs Arpana Satyu-Burge and Martin Burge, the founders and owners of acclaimed Dutch Monkey Doughnuts in Cumming. I enjoyed the class, but it was not what I expected. At the class I participated in at Salud! in Duluth/Johns Creek, we rolled sushi: https://www.yelp.com/biz/yelps-fit-club-cmye-whole-foods-tour-sushi-making-class-duluth. Each person had a seat with their own individually portioned set of ingredients. In general, we followed, step-by-step, as the instructors in the demonstration kitchen walked us through all that was entailed in making a sushi roll, from prepping the ingredients to assembling the roll. It was very interactive and hands-on. The doughnut class was different. While it was advertised as a "hands-on" experience, the interactivity was limited to some students taking turns doing a different task in the demonstration kitchen. Therefore, this was more of a demonstration class than a hands-on class. Examples of hands-on tasks included mixing various ingredients in bowls, rolling dough, and hand-cutting doughnuts out of the dough. Most of the class time was spent watching chefs Arpana and Martin cook in the demonstration kitchen. I know a lot of cooking classes are set up in this style, sort of like watching a cooking show on Food Network or Cooking Channel, but I was expecting to be making my own doughnuts. The class cost $55 per person and lasted a little over 2.5 hours. The official class time was 2pm to 5pm. When you sign up for a class at Salud!, you must book and pay online in advance. On the day of the class, you should show up a few minutes early and check in at the Whole Foods customer service desk at the front of the store. After entering the store, the cooking class is located in the back-left, up the stairs. We were each handed a class lecture packet, a pen to take notes, an apron, and name tags. There was bottled water and snacks. The snacks included chips and dip (guacamole), a couple cheeses (e.g. brie), grapes, nuts, crackers, and toast. The class lecture packet included recipes for 2 doughnuts chefs Arpana and Martin showed us how to make: (1) cardamom cake doughnuts with apricot sabayon and (2) buttermilk cake doughnuts with lemon curd and vanilla meringue. We watched as chefs Arpana and Martin made each of the following components from scratch: buttermilk cake doughnuts, apricot sabayon, lemon curd, vanilla meringue, and almond croquant. There were only 13 students, the 2 chefs/instructors, 1 person who worked for Salud!/Whole Foods, and 4 Salud! volunteers. That meant the student to instructor/employee/volunteer ratio was very high (13:7). This was a fairly casual and intimate experience. We huddled around the demonstration kitchen, watched, listened, and asked questions. Both Arpana and Martin are soft-spoken so there were a few times when some of us could not hear what they were saying. In this case, a microphone-speaker setup might have been nice. The classroom is outfitted with video cameras and displays, but they were not in use for this class. When I took the sushi-making at Salud! in Duluth/Johns Creek, they used the cameras and displays to make it easier for the students to see ingredient prep, etc. For this doughnut-making class, I think the cameras would have been useful for several of the mixing bowls since the insides of the bowls were hard for some of us to see. After about 2 hours, the freshly-made doughnuts were ready for us to eat. They looked and tasted absolutely magnificent. These were gourmet doughnuts to a tee. Rich, luscious, and decadent. It was easy to see why Arpana and Martin have become successful. Martin finished off the lemon curd and vanilla meringue doughnuts with some blowtorch action. Arpana plated the cardamom cake doughnuts with apricot sabayon perfectly. (I think my pictures speak for themselves.) Whole Foods Allegro Coffee was served with our doughnuts. I believe normally up to 2 glasses of wine per student are served per class, but coffee pairs better with doughnuts. Thank you to chefs Arpana and Martin for conducting the class, to Shannon Marsh, Whole Foods' cooking school administrator, for organizing everything, and to the volunteers for their help. Everyone was nice. If you're interested in taking a cooking class at Salud!, be sure to sign up early because classes fill up fast. Also, grab a loyalty card. If you purchase 7 classes and you get an 8th class for free.

I'm not the biggest fan of sweets (except for my weakness: bubble tea), but I do enjoy a great…read moredoughnut every now and then. So when the opportunity to enroll in the "Divine Doughnuts with Dutch Monkey" cooking class came up as a possible way to celebrate a fellow foodie friend's birthday as a group, I agreed it was a great idea and signed up online. Since I had heard great things about Dutch Monkey Doughnuts, located all the way up in Cumming, I thought this "cooking class" would be the perfect opportunity to both learn how to make amazing doughnuts at home AND try their famous doughnuts! The class was advertised as "Hands-on" and cost $55 for a 3-hour session (actually ended up being 2.5 hours). I thought this was a steep price for a doughnut-making class (as opposed to a cooking class for a meal that would include wine), but I had incorrectly assumed that each student would be making a batch of their own doughnuts and could take some home at the end. I had never taken a cooking class at Salud Cooking School before, so I really didn't know what to expect, but I did think that I'd be making my own doughnuts. Led by Chefs Martin Burge and Arpana Satyu-Burge, married couple and owners of Dutch Monkey Doughnuts, the class size was limited to 12 students (and quickly sold out online). However, my friends appreciated that management was kind enough to allow one of our friends, a 13th student, enroll and join our class at the last minute. Upon checking in a few minutes before the class start time - 2 pm - I received a stapled packet that included recipes for the two doughnuts that would be made during this class: Cardamom Cake with Apricot Sabayon and Buttermilk Cake with Lemon Curd and Vanilla Meringue. When I made it upstairs to the classroom, I received a name tag, an apron, and a pen to jot down notes in my class packet. I also noticed there were bottled waters, coffee, and a spread of healthy snacks from Whole Foods available for students to munch on - tortilla chips, guacamole, crackers, cheese, and fruit. I appreciated this in lieu of the two glasses of wine that students at meal-cooking classes receive. After putting on my apron, my fellow students and I huddled around Chefs Martin and Arpana as they began prepping the dough for the doughnuts. I noticed they asked for student "volunteers" to help prep the dough and doughnut toppings, and I kept waiting for the part of the class where all students would have the opportunity to watch and follow along as the instructors completed each detailed step. This never happened. The entire class ended up being more of a demonstration than the hands-on learning experience that I had expected. Being short in stature, I had a hard time seeing a lot of what was going on - especially when something was being mixed in a bowl or cooked on the stove. I'm not sure why, but the instructors didn't use microphones or utilize the TV screens (connected to video cameras) installed in the classroom that would allow everyone to easily see what was going on in the kitchen. At the end, when the chefs were done making the doughnuts, each student received two beautiful, Instagram-worthy doughnuts: one Cardamom Cake and one Buttermilk Cake. The Cardamom Cake doughnut with Apricot Sabayon was honestly the best doughnut I had ever had in my life! The Buttermilk Cake with Lemon Curd and Vanilla Meringue was also delicious and came in at a close second best doughnut I've tasted. When the class was over, students were neither offered seconds nor the leftovers of the few dozen doughnuts that were made. It turned out this was because the volunteer assistants, the four of whom did not appear to do much during the class, were expected to take them (as a reward for volunteering). Personally, I didn't finish my second doughnut (we were about to go to dinner), so I asked if there was a small to-go box I could put it in to take home. Apparently, it isn't a common practice to take leftovers from Salud cooking classes home since no containers were available. Fortunately, one of the volunteers found some Ziploc bags, and I took my half-eaten doughnut in one. I really wish that this class had been advertised as a "Demonstration" and not "Hands-on," and I felt that the price should have been lower as a result. We literally received two doughnuts and didn't experience the doughnut-making process unless we had "volunteered" to do things in front of the class - and I'm not the type to be put on the spot in a group setting. Overall, based on my experience with this particular class, Salud Cooking School gets 3.5 stars. I really would have preferred for each student to make their own batch of doughnuts, or - at the very least - decorate their own doughnuts. I'm glad the doughnuts were delicious, and I definitely plan to make the trek to visit Chefs Martin and Arpana at Dutch Monkey Doughnuts for more of their amazing doughnuts!

We hosted my son's sixth birthday at YCA in Sandy Springs this past weekend and could not have been…read moremore thrilled with the entire experience. The planning / coordination was seamless, the host was absolutely awesome in keeping 20+ young kids engaged and entertained, and parents were thrilled with how much fun their kids were having. There was a lot of on-site problem solving (the big "6" candle broke so we used frosting; more kids than expected showed up, etc.) but the staff at YCA handled everything like pros and it was really such a wonderful celebration.

They are providing such essential skills our children are no longer getting in most schools.read more