Ritz Carlton Cooking School - Grande Lakes Orlando

We have had the privilege of attending the the Cooking School at Ritz Carlton Grande Lakes Orlando twice. The first time, the theme was barbeque. The most recent experience as focuses on South American cuisine and this is the one I am going to review here. This experience was a package and included:

• 2 nights in a Garden View room

• Continental Breakfast Saturday morning

• Cooking class Saturday Morning to prepare lunch

• Special Argentinean Wine Dinner Saturday night

• Brunch Sunday

• Late check out Sunday

• Valet parking

• Gift from the Chef – a cutting board, dessert cookbook and apron in our case

• All the recipes



The Class

The class is fantastic. Executive Chef Sean Woods leads the class. He selects 3-4 other chefs to help teach and prepare the meal. Since the class is limited to 20 participants, this means that we ended up in groups no larger than 4 per chef. After our continental breakfast we dig in to preparing a long list of buffet items. Each group takes a set of dishes off the lunch menu and works with the chef to prepare the dishes. The menu for this class was:

• Appetizers: Empanadas, Potato Puffs

• Salad: King Crab on Baby Greens with Hearts of Palm, Heirloom Tomato and Onion Salad with Bay Scallops

• Main Selection: Chi lean Turbot, Pork and Shellfish Stew, Hot and Spicy Chicken, Grilled Hanger Steak

• Sides: Grilled Cauliflower in Almond Sauce, Chilean Hot Pepper Sauce, Parsley Sauce

• Desserts: Churros, plus an assortment of the chef’s choosing



This is definitely hands on! It’s so fun to be working right alongside these chefs and learning all their little techniques. Here is Chef Woods showing Glenn how to filet the Chilean Turbot:

The Property

The Grande Lakes property is gorgeous. The campus includes a JW Marriot, a golf course, a pool, a spa, a ropes course and a creek. They offer a lot of different excursions depending on what you like to do: kayak, fish, golf, spa, etc. It is always clean and well kept. We really enjoy it there.

The rooms are also very nice and include huge bathrooms with two sinks and a separate shower and tub. All the rooms have these cute little balconies where you can relax with your in-room coffee in the morning.

The Service

The front desk service is impressive. Once we checked in, we were greeted by name every time we came across each person again. A chef we had met at the last cooking class even sent us a glass of champagne by the pool. We really appreciate small touches like that.

The Restaurants/Bars
This is our only complaint with this property. While the food at our brunch at the Vineyard Grille was fantastic, the service was not. We waited an unacceptable amount of time for drink refills and for dirty dishes to be cleared away. They forgot about our table for over 40 minutes. Not so great. In addition, we have been unable during the course of two visits to secure a drink by the pool. This most recent visit, Glenn was finally able to find a poolside waiter after 5 minutes of walking around. The waiter said he would get back to us and never mind. At this level of hotel, it is sure annoying to be denied the opportunity to spend money.

Overall
As our repeat visit indicates, we love this cooking school program. We learn something new each time and it always feels like a vacation. If they continue to offer it, we will continue to attend.

Glenn's Hotel Reviews - China

Xi’an - Aurum International
My wife and I toured China with Friendly Planet from 1/27 - 2/5 and stayed here for one night while visiting Xi’an and the Terra Cota Army museum. I think I saw this hotel rated as four star, however that must be in relative terms to other hotels in the area. We had a suite with separate living area and bedroom. Bed was a double which was VERY firm (aka “hard”). Was challenging for the two of us (both over 6 feet tall) but it worked out since we were both tired from the day of touring. Breakfast (included for our stay) was not memorable. Combination of Western and Chinese dishes – nothing particularly amazing but you could find something to satisfy. The hotel is close to downtown and within walking distance of the Bell Tower and many restuarants and shops. If your plans extend to more than a couple of days, I would stay somewhere else. It was perfect for us for the one night.

Beijing - The Beijing International Hotel
My wife and I toured China with Friendly Planet and stayed here for three nights. Is one of the nicest hotels I have stayed. Had a beautiful room room with a fantastic bathroom and bed with great view of the city. Robes and slippers provided. Breakfast (included in our stay) was really great. Nice mixture of Western and Chinese selections. Really good dumplings, noodles, steamed buns and fruit. Also had omelettes made to order. Only issue we had was a sewer odor on day 2. We went down to the hotel manager and we were moved to another floor and didn't have any the problem again. We were told that floors 16 and 17 had the "issue" - so you may want to avoid those floors when staying here. It didn't detract from our stay since the matter was handled promptly and professionally. The fitness center, pool and spa were closed for renovations during our stay (exepcted to open in October 2010), so can't review those. Although the "artist's renderings" looked like it would be nice.

Shanghai - Broadway Mansions Hotel
My wife and I toured China with Friendly Planet and stayed here for 3 nights. This is an old 1930's era art deco style hotel. Very nice lobby. Rooms were small but nicely laid out with a desk area in the bedroom. Internet access was reasonably priced (US 8 cents a minute or US$20/day). Beds were extremely hard - which is common in China. Got a backache after the first night which made it tough to sleep except for the nights when we were really tired (at least one). We had what was called a smoking room on the 6th floor, but there was no odor of smoke to our surprise. The hall area of the floor smelled of smoke, but the room was fine. Had a great bathroom with glassed in tub and separate shower. Breakfast (included in our stay) was average but you could find something to satisfy. Best choices were fruit (delicious watermelon) and made to order eggs. The Chinese and Western "steam table" selections were lacking.
It is hard to recommend the hotel, purely based on the comfort of the beds. Maybe if you brought an inflatable mattress it would help.

Day 9 - The Journey Home

About noon we headed to the Shanghai airport for our 2 and a half hour flight to Beijing. Everything went according to plan and we took off at 3:00 pm, landed in Beijing at 5:15 pm. We had a 3 hour layover so we spent the last of our yuan on Pizza hut, water and caramels. Our flight boarded at 9:00 pm on Friday. This flight, Glenn and I decided to request aisle seats for both of us. We ended up 4 rows apart with empty middle seats so we both had a really pleasant flight – sleeping away most of it. We landed in LA at 4:15 pm on Friday – more than 4 hours BEFORE we departed. The international dateline does weird things. We had previously decided to spend the night in LA so we didn’t have to worry about immigration or customs. I quickly texted some good friends from college. Lucky for us, they were free. They came and picked us from the hotel and we headed to Rush Street in Culver City for an awesome dinner! It was nice not to have to worry about the ice in my drink or if the bathroom would have toilets. After a quick sleep tonight, we’ll be headed back to LA.

Day 8 – Our own private tour of Shanghai

We met our guide, Eee yore, this morning at 9:00 am. She just finished university last year. Her major was foreign trade, but she can make more money being a tour guide as few as 7 days a month than the salary for a starting position in her field of study. There was a slightly awkward moment when Sam, our Friendly Planet tour guide came down and saw us with her, but oh well. We jumped into a taxi and headed for the French Concession. Our first stop was Fuxing Park. It is an amazing park. It was so great. There were so many there doing their “morning exercises.” This means people were out practicing revolution songs of their youth, practicing calligraphy using water on the sidewalk, practicing tai chi, ballroom dancing, line dancing to “Santa Claus is coming to town”, playing badminton and practicing kung fu. It was just so cool. We walked around. A man who was drawing calligraphy on the sidewalk stopped us and wanted to write a special message for us. He wrote “Happy New Year” and “Wishing you Happy Travels”.

We walked down the street to a many set of alleys filled with shops and restaurants called Tianzi Fang. It was tiny little shops where the owners lived upstairs. It is also the home to many artists and their galleries. After that, we headed to Jade Buddha Temple. It’s the first Buddha temple we visited. The smell of incense hung in the air. We first visited the Hall of Kings – where the four kings reside. Together, each of the characters of their names forms the phrase “Everything will be alright.” Then off to see many different Buddha with the final Buddha – the jade Buddha in the reclining position. It was a little disconcerting to see such a relic smack dab in the middle of a gift shop.

Feeling hungry, we headed to Old Town – the location of the Yu Garden we saw the first day. We tried stinky tofu from a street vendor. It tastes a lot like regular fried tofu except it smells terrible as it cooks. Then we went to a Shanghai restaurant for lunch. We tried soup dumplings. These tiny dumplings magically hold liquid so it’s a burst of soup when you bite into them. We also had fried noodles and regular dumplings. Feeling fortified, we walked around Old Town. Glenn bargained with a street vendor to get a New Year’s decoration. The vendor started at 160 RMB, but Glenn quickly got him down to 25 RMB just by walking away. Yay! We walked down “Food Street” which was filled with street vendors. It was fine because it was winter, but with all the raw food out, I definitely would have been squeamish if it was summer.

We hopped on the ferry to go to the other side of the river to visit the Oriental Pearl Tower. We took the local ferry since it was only 8 cents a person. However, this was also the ferry all the motorbikes so we had to dodge the bikes and the gas fumes getting off the ferry. We walked over to the Oriental Pearl Tower – one of the tallest TV towers in the world. We headed up to the observation deck. It was a pretty good view even with the pollution. One of the coolest parts was one floor down where they have a skywalk – an observation deck with a see through floor. It was really cool and a little scary. Back down on ground level, we wandered through the museum. It had stamps from the Communist regime where people were paid with stamps instead of currency. For instance, you could get a stamp for food, furniture, bus pass, a bike, etc. Then we walked through the depictions of Shanghai over the years. It really is incredible the influence the international community had on the development of this city. After this excursion, we decided to call it a day and headed back to the hotel. All said and done, hiring a private guide and paying for all our transportation and admissions cost us only $44 more than if we had taken the optional tour offered through Friendly Planet plus we got to see more, eat better food, and do it all at our own pace. Tonight we are going out to dinner and drinks with our Friendly Planet tour guide Sam. We are pretty excited to get to just hang out with him.

Dinner with Sam was great. He had heard of a street with bars and restaurants in the French Concession so we hopped in a cab and headed there. Our cab quickly came to a dead stop because a dump truck was blocking the entire road as the demolition crew was using a front loader to fill it – right in the middle of the street. Finally after five minutes of non-stop honking the dump truck took a loop around the block to clear traffic. WE arrived at the street which was just outside a shopping mall. We perused all the restaurants and the busiest restaurant was a German Beer Hall so we ended up there. We think it was Sam’s first time with German food and beer. We ordered a cold cut and cheese platter and pretzels. It was really good. We had a really nice time with Sam just chatting about his family and our life back in the States. We called it an early night because he had to be up early to see some of the tour off on their flights to Hong Kong. This morning we had a leisurely breakfast and finishing getting packed. We have a flight from Shanghai to Beijing, a three hour layover and then our 12 hour flight from Beijing to Los Angeles. We have definitely loved China and will put it on our list of places to visit again.

Day 7 The Bund, Microbreweries and a very interesting taxi ride

Today we headed out into the Bund district just south of our hotel. It’s right on the river and the architecture is quite interesting. We took the advice of the guidebook and found this quaint little café in the middle of an office building and had our morning cappuccino. A cappuccino costs more than most purses, but is SO worth it. Then we walked down to the People’s Square and the Shanghai Museum. Both were very nice. We toured the jade, bronze, furniture, and currency exhibitions at the Museum. The People’s Square had a central park type of feel. Shanghai is very different than Beijing. It has a higher population, more bikes, and was developed by foreign interests. The British began the invasion winning what was called the British concession – a section of Shanghai that was controlled by the British. Many countries followed with their own concessions. The French concession is still the name of a popular neighborhood even though the Chinese are back in control.

After the museum, we headed over to the Bund Brewery – a micro brewery in the Bund area. They had three types of beer: light, wheat and dark. We had a nice lunch of dark beer, chicken wings and fish and chips. Then we headed to the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. This Tunnel was hilarious! It’s a cheap Disney ride that transports tourists from one side of the river to the other. You board single train cars that go on a track through the tunnel passing through paradise, hell, the sky and the underwater world – all designated by different colors of lights. So funny! On the other side of the river, we set off looking for the Chinese Sexual Culture Museum – which we couldn’t believe actually existed. Well, after looking high and low we learned it had closed. Big surprise. The trip was still worth it as we had a lovely walk down the Riverside Promenade. Back through the Sightseeing Tunnel and to Nan Jing Road – the Mecca of shopping. It’s neon-upped just like Times Square and just as busy. It was fun to walk through all the shops and I got a few bargains.

Then we bravely figured out the metro and headed into the French Concession in search of another micro-brewery: Boxing Cat Brewery. We found it pretty easily. I guess our navigation skills are getting better. We tried the four beers on tap: Stout, IPA, Vienna Lager, and the Light Lager. The IPA and Vienna Lager were very hoppy. We got a chance to meet the brew master and he was fascinating. He is originally from Houston and has been in Shanghai for three years. He has to import all his ingredients. The hops are the most difficult to get and he resorts to having friends who are coming to visit bring the hops in their luggage. He has to tailor his beer to the ingredients on hand which can be quite a challenge. We also had dinner there – a shrimp po’boy and a hamburger. We definitely needed a break from the Chinese spinner dinner.

After dinner, we grabbed a taxi, showed him our hotel card which has the hotel address and map in Chinese. Our taxi driver had NO IDEA where he was going. He drove the wrong way down one way streets. We definitely saw areas of Shanghai we would have never seen otherwise. He even tried to drop us off at a place called the Spicy Horse in one of the neighborhoods down by the dock. He finally made it to a place where we recognized where we were and we had him let us off. We headed to the Hotel’s British Bar for a drink. The décor was British, but the music was very loud Dr. Dre. After an overpriced round of drinks, we just decided to head back to the room and chill. We have hired a private guide for tomorrow. It’s less than the cost of the optional city tour with our tour company and we’ll get to see more. We both are pretty excited.

Day 6 – Well, hello Shanghai

We got up early this morning and headed out to the airport for our flight to Shanghai. It was nice because they had group check in so the bellmen picked up our luggage, checked it in at the airport and our tour guide just handed out our boarding passes. No line, no wait. The flight was uneventful. We got to Shanghai and boarded the fastest train in the world – the Maglov! It was VERY exciting. It gets up to 430 km/hour which is something like 220 mph. It’s a magnetic levitation so it floats above the track. It was awesome! It covered 30 km in 8 minutes. Very exciting.

After getting off the train, we headed to lunch. Another day, another lazy susan filled with Chinese food adapted for tourists. Then off to the Yu Garden. The Yu Garden is in a section of town called Old Town. It’s winding, narrow streets filled with tiny shops, then you come across this walled off garden. The garden is filled with beautiful rock structures, waterfalls, and small canals. It was really lovely. It was built by a high ranking official during the Ming dynasty.

After the Garden, we headed back to the hotel to check in. It was about 4:30 pm. Glenn and I laid down for a quick nap. That nap lasted until 10:30 pm when we got up and went to bed. We are very well rested for our day today – wandering around the Bund district.

Day 5 – Xi’an: Terra Cotta Soldiers, dumplings, and tour fatigue

Today’s tour started very early. A 5:30 am wake up call and on the road by 6:30 am. We travelled to the Beijing airport and checked into our flight to Xi’an. Xi’an is one of the oldest cities in China. It served as the capital for 13 dynasties. We touched down and headed out with our local tour guide Jerry. Jerry was a fantastic guide. I found him hilarious because he talked non-stop and usually about what we were seeing. He was telling us about the history of Xi-an, saw a child and explained the one-child policy. This population control policy only applies to the Han people who make up 95% of the Chinese population. It has worked to curb population growth, but created a great disparity in the number of men and women since men are preferred. We read in the paper they are currently debating easing the restrictions to allow couples to have two children. The culture is based on the young taking care of the old; it will be difficult for one child to take care of his/her parents plus 2 sets of grandparents. Then he saw a BYD car and explained how Warren Buffett had recently invested in BYD so it would soon be a worldwide brand. Driving into Xi’an was honestly depressing. A grayish brown fog hung over the city blocking out what I assume to be a beautiful view of the mountains and it was a good, clear day. The smell of the coal fired plants just hung in the air. We passed farm lands with dilapidated brick homes. We went first to a handicraft site, of course. We learned how they make the terra cotta soldiers and the present day replicas. This is where tour fatigue really began to set in. We are both tired of taking so much for shopping and waiting for people to complete their shopping. Then we headed to lunch. For our included lunches, we sit at tables of 8-10 around a lazy Susan and they bring all different types of dishes to try. I think in general this is really fun, except they only bring enough for each person to have one or two bites so people get really stressed that they aren’t going to get any if someone takes too much. Then there is the issue of serving utensils. Most of us just reach in with our chopsticks and get what we want, but this grosses out another member of our tour group. Ahhh, the joys of traveling in a group. After lunch and too much time shopping, we headed to the terra cotta museum.

The museum is magnificent. Basically, in 1974 a farmer dug a well and found terra cotta solider remains. He notified the government and they began excavating. The site they unearthed was far greater than they could have ever imagined. The emperor, Qin Shi Huang, had ordered the replication of his army for his tomb. Qin Shi Huang is one of the most famous emperors because he unified all of China. His mausoleum is believed to stretch over at least a mile of land with the terra cotta soldiers being the farthest away. But it wasn’t just the army that was included, it was everything needed to sustain life: horses, chariots, stable hands, acrobats, supplies for digging wells, decorative bronze sculptures – all to take with him into the afterlife. The tomb took 40 years and at least 700,000 workers to create which is especially amazing because he only ruled for 37 of those years. The next emperor had to complete the tomb. The tomb itself looks like a large mound of dirt in the distance. At this time, archeologists have decided it is too dangerous to excavate.

The museum is divided into 3 pits. Pit 1 is the largest and housed in a building the size of an airplane hangar. At this point, about 6,000 warriors and horses have been uncovered. The warriors and horses were placed in battle formation on a tile floor in between walls of earth. Then wooden cross beams were placed perpendicular to the walls, covered with fiber mats and then covered with earth so from the surface, it just looked like a field. The pits were damaged during a revolution when the area was burned so the wooden beams caved in and broke many of the soldiers. Archeologists have to painstakingly glue the pieces back together to reproduce how the tomb would have looked. To the right of Pit 1 is Pit 2. This pit contains 1300 warriors and soldiers and is still being excavated. Pit 3 is believed to be the army headquarters complete with a room for making sacrifices before the battle. It is just incredible the amount of detail that went into this construction.

After the short tour of the museum, we headed back to the city center. Glenn and I decided to go on the optional tour – a dynasty show and dumpling dinner. Little did we know what a treat the dynasty show would be because it took place in an amusement park! Yes, the Tang dynasty amusement park. The only thing I can compare it to is things I have heard about Branson, MO. We walked in and the front part is a “cultural park” with replicas of gardens, traditional buildings, and exhibitions. Then we went to the show which was filled with music, dancing and song. The dancing was so-so but the costumes were amazing!! Behind the cultural park is a bona-fide amusement park with zipper rides, tilt-a-wheels, the whole works. We just couldn’t stop laughing. It’d be like having a pilgrim amusement park!

After the park, we headed to the hotel to check in. We stayed at the Aurum International Hotel near the city center. For all the depressing brick buildings we passed, the city center is quite exciting. We passed the Big Goose Pagoda and then drove into a neon extravaganza. The city walls and gates were beautifully lit. Our hotel was very nice with a sitting area outside the bedroom. After checking out the hotel, we headed to Da Fa Chung for dinner. We passed the Drum and Bell towers and all the excitement the high end shopping malls had to offer. Traffic – both pedestrian and automotive – was insane.


The restaurant is a famous local place for what they call dumpling banquet. After a course of 5-7 cold appetizers including noodle, peanut and vegetable dishes, we were served 18 little dumplings in all different shapes and fillings. It was amazing and SO delicious. There was pumpkin, pork, chicken, seafood, shrimp, vegetable and even walnut dumpling in the shape of a walnut. Then they heat up a pot of chicken, lamb, and duck broth at the table and cook some “baby” chicken dumplings. It was a really neat experience. After dinner, we were exhausted so we just headed to bed.