Mise En Place

Another fun Unilocal Elite event since… People don’t cook no more all they do is Unilocal all they do is Unilocal.Well this place pushed that to the side for a night and had us in there cooking. So… let me not tell you a lie… I really didn’t cook, I prepped for the cooks. However, I contributed to my teams winless but tasty entrée… and we had a lot of fun socializing and eating other people’s dishes. This is a fun activity if you’re up for a Chef challenge, want to expand on your cooking skills, or just want to cook but don’t want to mess up your own kitchen. Now Get to Cooking or Keep Unilocaling about other people’s cooking! Do you boo.

A wonderful, welcoming, place for a fun cooking class! If you’re in the market to try something different for a date night, friends night, or team building with coworkers, definitely try Mise En Place. Thank you to Chef Nate for being a great instructor!

Held a team-​building event here and it was a blast. I was surprised that everyone — especially the guys in the group — joined in and the «meals» we turned out were all tasteful and presented beautifully! Highly recommend, and would love to do it again!

My boyfriend and I took a cooking class here tonight with Chef Nate, and it was amazing. Great place, great chef, great people, great food. I’ll definitely go back.

My husband and I wanted to try something different; something other than the classic dinner/​movie date night. We decided to take a cooking class together. The school itself was as charming as it’s location along the cobble-​stoned streets of Shockoe Slip. Our dinner included rack of lamb, a cheese soufflé, carrots, and raspberry coulis. My husband and I had never tried our hands at baking a soufflé, and I’m happy to report we were successful! Dinner included wine and lots of great conversation. I would highly recommend this as a date night, girl’s night out or just to meet new people in general who love food. The group we were with included all of those! In reading some of the previous posts, the chef and other helpers were there to answer questions or grab extra ingredients, utensils or dishes when they were needed. Not sure of the difference in the meals, but for us, it was a wonderful experience and a good change in pace!

Participated in a class about healthy cooking last night with Chef Jenny. There were about 12 participants. Jenny was pleasant and began by reviewing the nights menu. She then broke us up into groups of two to three so that each could prepare a portion of the meal. There were instructions at our station and we made our item. There was NO personal instruction from the Chef. We didn’t learn any techniques. We were not told about how to make dishes in a more healthy manner. The recipes were emailed to us. I feel like I paid $ 65 to get five recipes emailed to me. The food was good and I enjoyed the light meal with the group, but did not feel like I attended an instructional class.

I am a French teacher in the Richmond, VA area. For the past six years, I have taken my 7^th and 8^th grade French students to Mise En Place as a field trip. During their time at Mise, my students prepare a meal planned to my specifications by the owner of Mise, Christine Wansleben. EVERY field trip experience has been wonderful for my students due to the detailed planning and culinary skills of Ms. Wansleben! She is an amazing wizard of culinary arts. She is very happy to share her love of food preparation, meal planning, and technical skills with my students. Time and time again my students have told me how much they enjoyed being at Mise and working with Ms. Wansleben. Also, countless students prepare recipes they learned at Mise for their own families. This field trip gives even students who have never cooked before the confidence to prepare meals at their homes. I am very happy that I learned about opportunities at Mise En Place years ago. It has been a pleasure to plan to work alongside Ms. Wansleben and her staff.

My recent experience is very different from the last reviewer. On a visit to Richmond, I took a fresh pasta class with Chef Nate. There were just 8 people in the class. We worked in teams of two and each person participated in every step with one on one instruction.
We made the basic dough, learned to use the pasta machine, formed the linguini and ravioli, made the ravioli filling and made three of the sauces. The chef had already started the meat sauce hours before the class.
The chef was extremely knowledgable about his subject and gave us great tips about handling, drying, cooking and storing the pasta and the dough.
By the time we sat down to eat, we felt like an extended family. The chef and his assistant served salad, ravioli with 2 sauces and linguini with two sauces, wine and a surprise dessert.
I’ve taken dozens of cooking classes and this is one of the best I’ve ever experienced. The value was excellent. One reviewer thought the class was expensive, but I can’t imagine getting such a quality meal with wine for the price — never mind the experience and the recipes. The chef’s dessert — a chocolate sausage — alone was worth the price!
A real gem of a place.

I don’t like to be negative. The cooking demo was a fun idea, and as a foodie, I’m always happy to talk about, learn about, and experiment with food. Especially when I can eat it!
We came while visiting in Richmond. We knew to expect a demo and not an interactive session, so this wasn’t a surprise. Chef Christine was obviously very accomplished. She did a great deal of talking, but seemed like mostly about herself. She prepared the food (arugula & walnut pesto with white bean spread and sausage; kale chips; sautéed mushrooms and asparagus mixed with quinoa) without a great deal of instruction, but with a lot of chatter about her history, and opinions about local restaurants. She coughed into her hand and had to be asked by another attendee to wash her hands before returning to food preparation. She tasted the food from a spoon with her finger, and continued to use the same spoon. She also repeatedly drank from her Starbucks drink while preparing our food. I thought that wasn’t appropriate for a chef amidst food preparation.
The school is in a pleasant location and is a fun thing to do if you’ve never done this kind of thing. We spent $ 45 per person and didn’t get a glass of wine! In fact, the ice tea she served in plastic cups wasn’t even cold.

My place of work recently visited for a team building event, being that this was somewhat unique.
There were two instructional chefs and one assistant. In the beginning, one chef reviewed the menu, gave info about each station and explained how the kitchen worked. We were making a 5 course meal including a salad (wilted spinach and apple salad,) main dish (pecan & panko oven baked chicken breasts,) a starch (white rice with sautéed onions in chicken stock,) a veggie (roasted broccoli with garlic Parmesan butter,) and dessert (pumpkin tart with red wine caramel reduction.)
We had 4 – 5 people on each station, which was really too many. If you’re going to do this as a group, really 2 for each is all you need…3 would be stretching it. While preparing the food, the two chefs and assistant were always around for questions or assistance, which was great because we had a LOT. We did notice a couple of minor issues… one was that sometimes the chefs would give conflicting instructions. The other is that the recipes weren’t always for the amounts of ingredients (our broccoli recipe called for 8lbs, we were given 6) which while not a big deal, it would have been nice to have it matched up.
Once our items were prepared and cooking, the chefs took over the finishing and cleaning up. Food was placed in serving dishes on a counter and everyone plated their own food. The recipes themselves were very easy, and very delicious… i would definitely make the broccoli on my own. And they served the meal with both white and red wine. Yes, I know you’re not supposed to have red with chicken, but I like red wine and it was a pretty good malbec-​cabernet blend.
So a couple of negatives… price, being one. It was around $ 50 a person. Granted, it’s cheaper than $ 100 that Boar’s Head charges, but still. The other is that we made a TON of food… easily double of what was needed for our group but yet we weren’t allowed to take the food home. Someone in the group asked if it was going to be donated to a shelter and was told that the owner usually takes it home for her family. WTF? I’m sorry, but that really annoyed me, mainly for the fact of how much was leftover. If it had been a couple pieces of chicken and a few servings of the other dishes, no big deal. But there was AT LEAST 10 pounds of chicken breasts leftover, as well as big serving bowls of the sides… more than enough to feed 10 – 15 people. Being that we told them well in advance how many people were going to be there, I don’t see what the purpose of making so much was… to feed the owners family?
Overall…the recipes were very good and very easy (and were provided to us to take with us.) We did have a lot of fun. The price is prohibitive, and the issue with so much food being cooked is a major negative for me… enough of an issue that I won’t go back and I won’t recommend others to go.