Sydney Cooking School

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I ended up coming to the as a date night idea, and I've got to give it to my partner, it was a very good idea.

We did a Thai cooking class that teaches you (and gives you the recipe for) Pad Thai, Thai beef salad, and massaman curry. The classes run for 2 hours and there are classes throughout the week in the evening as well as during the day on weekends.

The has a whole range of classes available ranging from beginners, international cuisines, desserts and classes just for kids/teens.

Located in Neutral Bay the building is very easy to get to by bus as it is opposite the Big Bear shopping centre (where multiple busses stop) although a little more tricky if you're coming by train. There's also a decent amount of free parking around (but you may need to spend a few minutes searching around the block).

Everything starts laid out for you (I never realised how much easier cooking is when someone else has done all the prep work beforehand), which means you get to do all the fun steps with none of the clean up!




The class is definitely aimed more at couples or pairs as the stations are all set up as doubles (but if you decide to go by yourself you are likely to be matched up with another solo chef, so it's a good way to make new friends).

As a fairly novice chef, I was able to comfortably follow along, and our instructor provided helpful advice that suited both starter and more seasoned chefs by giving us the low down on where to get the best authentic Thai ingredients. Our instructor would show us techniques including how to get all the juice out of a lime, and how to choose the freshest ingredients. She let us know which brand names would produce which tastes and told us the location of where to get authentic Thai produce.



I'll admit that I'm not the best when it comes to spices and chillies, but our instructor wisely started at a low level and let us add more as we went along to our own personal tastes. Additionally, we had a couple of food allergy concerns, and the was very accommodating and provided multiple alternative food options for us so we could still participate and cook everything.



By the time we got to making our Pad Thai, the room was so full of spices, onion, steam and more it was starting to make my eyes (and my mouth) water. It was all systems go with each pair making all three dishes simultaneously whilst our instructor prepared meat for us in the background.





A nice perk of this particular course is that they provide soft drinks and alcoholic beverages for you to enjoy with your freshly made meal, and delicious fresh rice too.



The whole process is very streamlined with there being lots of containers of different sizes for you to pack up all the leftovers. Yes, there will be leftovers, each portion provides enough for two people to eat and still have enough to take home for a second meal which was an unexpected surprise. The even provides little baggies for you to take all your leftovers home in.



This cooking class can appear to be quite pricey (at $140 per person) which made me a little hesitant at first, but the overall experience was well-organised and you could tell that these were professionals who knew what they were doing. There were so many extra little things that I hadn't considered such as the large serving sizes, the provision of drinks and rice as well as takeaway containers. I think it definitely made it worth the cost in the end.

The entire process from beginning to end was streamlined, everything ran smoothly, which made it easy to relax, follow along and simply have fun. I definitely laughed and had a good time throughout the lesson, and I really enjoyed the process of learning to cook a new dish that I hadn't tried before.

The has other courses available, and I think I know what our next date adventure will be!

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