We wanted to do something fun and creative for our wedding rehearsal dinner and thought a cooking class would be a great way to bring two families together and have a lot of fun creating a meal. The ideal was not met at Gaynor's School of Cooking. When half of our party arrived, Gaynor wanted to get started and I said "we'll we're waiting for the other half of the group" - which was 8 couples, 16 people total. This threw Gaynor in an absolute tizzy. Although we had two phone conversations and about three additional emails back and forth about the date, time, menu, price, and size of the group somehow it got lost in translation that it was 16 people and not just 8. She didn't deal with this well and just kept insisting that I was wrong and she was right until I pulled up emails that proved my point. We paid half up front and came to the class ready to pay the other half (which was stated to me on the phone that was policy) yet the day of the class she yelled at me that she always takes the full amount up front, and made me out to be a liar. It was just awful!
So now everyone is stressed out and once the other half arrived, they immediately felt the tension in the room. Gaynor had to send her assistant out to get more food because she didn't have enough in stock. Overall I feel that Gaynor is very unprofessional and at $75 a person I would have rather gone to a nice dinner that included alcohol - yet here we brought our own wine and champagne and were yelled and made to feel uncomfortable the entire night - and spent $1,200.
My family is a bunch of jokers, so we did end up enjoying ourselves despite Gaynor's attitude toward us from the beginning. At one point she walked over to the oven and yelled "WHO SALTED THE CHIPS?" and everyone just froze and my now-husband yelled "Merrette did!" and then started laughing and said "I don't know why I just called you out Merrette, this lady is a drill sergeant". It was like having Gordon Ramsey in Hell's Kitchen at what we thought would be a fun night.
So the class started at 6PM, we didn't end up eating until after 9PM and at that point I think everyone had enough of the place and just wanted to get out of there. The meal wasn't all that great - all ingredients were bought at the grocery store - really nothing special, and like I said in retrospect I would have preferred to spend our money elsewhere.
I also thought the decor, ovens, and cooking utensils were outdated, not great quality - it lacked that gourmet vibe we were hoping for.
I personally wouldn't recommend Gaynor School of Cooking for a group that wants to have a relaxed, fun night of cooking.