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Amazing experience !!!!

We Had a half day cooking course with a total of 5 dishes. Chef Paul was great and as it was just... read more

Reviewed 24 October 2023
Marcdxb
,
Fort Lauderdale, Florida
via mobile
Fun and productive cooking class with a DELICIOUS menu!

My friend and I were lucky to have the afternoon cooking class all to ourselves with Chef Paul... read more

Reviewed 7 October 2023
dianaxs2022
,
Hong Kong, China
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24 - 29 of 73 reviews
Reviewed 22 January 2017

First I should say that this have been my third cooking class on Phuket, I have been to a place with a stunning view Thai Cookery and to lovely cooking Kata with a chef Sally , who likes her job. Both are worth money and time. You get some cooking tricks, you are introduced to Thai ingredients and all the teachers speak English, and you eat your lovely dishes while you make them.
And the experience mentioned above has nothing to do with Blue Elephant cooking school Phuket.
You do not get any introduction.
You do not have any explanation of how a dish should be made, any! You just get the ingredients and follow the plan listed at the given recipe.
Your teacher can barely speak English, so it is really hard to get any information, you should use mainly your body language.
You do not get any understanding of Thai ingredients, you just get a paper where they are listed.
Most of the ingredients are pre-cooked, and you do not know how they were made.
The course finishes one hour earlier to the time indicated on the website.
And above that all, you eat all you have made at the end of the class, so you eat the food you have prepared 2 hours ago, and yes it is cold by that time.
BUT, there is always something good)
The building is beautiful.
You make curry from the scratch.
You get a bag with spices:)
Really I was totally disappointed by this class. But you shall probably like it if you have never been to any cooking classes before.

Date of experience: January 2017
4  Thank Sasha T
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Reviewed 4 January 2017 via mobile

Great setting, fantastic waiter, delicious food. This was a surprisingly blissful dining experience. Will definitely come back.

Date of experience: January 2017
3  Thank zeroeight
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Reviewed 20 December 2016 via mobile

We hired a guide to show us the highlights of south Phuket. This was our first stop, we were able to walk inside and take pictures but it was 10:30am and not much was going on. It's a cool structure, but probably best to visit only if you want to participate in a cooking class or eat dinner.

Date of experience: December 2016
1  Thank Ash F
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Reviewed 14 October 2016

I’ve used to be a huge fan of Blue Elephant having visited their Bangkok restaurant multiple times. The first two cooking classes were held in Bangkok, and were delightful. So much so, on my last visit to Phuket, my 2 friends and I decided to take another cooking class.

Unfortunately, the class was such a complete disappointment. Here are some of my thoughts:

1) Structure of the class was lackluster, ineffective, and different from Bangkok. There was no classroom instruction. We sat around the classroom to ‘cool down’ while the Chef (Molly) and the helper prepared the ingredients of the next dish. We were then asked to go directly to the cooking stations, and with some very brief instruction, began to cook. As we were cooking, the “instructions” were hand-fed to us by the Chef (ie. pour in the coconut cream now, turn off the fire now). Not only was there no opportunity to jot down our own notes (often the Chef will provide very useful tips not in the recipe), I felt we were simply executing commands as they were told to us, instead of understanding the cooking process. There was no opportunity to run through the printed recipe. Back at home, without Molly telling me what/when to do each step, I can barely cook the dish.

2) The Chef provided very little ‘value-add’ to the course, much less than other Chefs from other cooking classes. During my other classes in Bangkok, the Chef would provide very useful ‘industry tips’ (ie. how to fold kaffir lime leaf in half and tear out the stem, how to cut out the center of a chili). The Chef just told us what we needed to do (ie. ‘tear the kaffir lime leaf into pieces’), and we were left to figure out how best to remove the stem and tear. It felt like she was either less experienced, or couldn’t be bothered to explain further.

3) The ingredients were not explained much if at all. The raw green papaya was already peeled/grated and no explanations were given for the following:
a) what is a raw green papaya, what does it look like, and is it the same as a normal Malaysian/Hawaiian papaya,
b) where can you buy it and alternatives if it is unavailable,
c) tips on selecting the best papaya,
d) how was it prepared into strips and how much papaya was needed to make a portion.
Given that the papaya was the key ingredient in the dish, it’s absolutely ridiculous to have been provided none of the above.

It was not just the papaya – other examples of the lack of explanation were:
- How Tamarind juice can be made from dried tamarind (I learnt this in Bangkok)
- Differences between various rice noodles on the market (size, shape, dry/fresh), and which ones can be used to make pad thai
- Differences between the various dried shrimp available in the market
- What is a sweet turnip, what does it look like in it’s raw form
I have zero confidence in making any of these dishes, because I don’t know how to source half of the ingredients in their raw form.

4) For the price of the course, I expected to prepare more of the ingredients ourselves. This is especially true for the green curry. Although the Chef quickly demonstrated how the green curry paste was made, the rest of us used pre-packaged green curry paste. Given the paste is the key ingredient of the curry, it would have been nice to have made it from scratch ourselves (I’ve been to much cheaper classes where we made the paste ourselves).

5) It felt like there was a lack of staff for our cooking class. I only observed the Chef and one helper preparing our class of 7-8 students. This was probably why a lot of the cooking class time was spent with us in the classroom doing nothing, while they were preparing our next dishes.

6) Upon ending the class, she handed out the certificates (in a very rushed and disorderly fashion), very quickly said thanks, and disappeared. There was no further time for discussion with her, nor did she show up at our table later to ask us how our food was. This was not necessary, but would have been a nice courtesy. Not sure where she was so busy to rush off to.

Overall, the experience was incredibly disappointing, and I felt fell very short of the quality I had come to expect from Blue Elephant. I have little confidence to cook any of the dishes we learned. Given that the classes at Blue Elephant was on the expensive end, I felt the experience was incredibly poor value. Hope this review has helped!

Date of experience: July 2016
10  Thank JamieTravelsWell
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
Reviewed 26 September 2016

Nice ambience and beautiful architecture. Loved the whole concept of learning to cook delicious thai dishes from the chef and having those served for dinner. The chef was very sweet and everyone was so friendly. Must visit when you are in phuket.

Date of experience: September 2016
1  Thank raksha_rao
This review is the subjective opinion of a Tripadvisor member and not of Tripadvisor LLC. Tripadvisor performs checks on reviews as part of our industry-leading trust & safety standards. Read our transparency report to learn more.
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