Dear Brett,
First of all, I apologize for the late reply. The reason for this is that I was very surprised when I read your review and first I wanted to investigate what might have happened .
I don't recall ever having received such a sad review and I couldn't imagine what could be the reason for the lack of any communication between you and the Chef.
You spent 1+4 hours ( shopping+cooking) together and she had no idea you felt so uncomfortable :(
I am very sorry to hear this, because our Chefs have enough freedom to modify the course flow and to suit it to the needs of the guests.
I'm so sorry you couldn't do shopping at the market. Even the time is limited, but we always find a little time to help guests make small purchases.
If you need more, we encourage you to come back and take the time to enjoy the beauty of shopping there. We also regret that the Chef unnecessarily warned you not to buy certain goods at the market. I asked her to shorten that.
Thank you to call my attention to following: You are absolutely right that it may have been confusing that other people who booked the class through other sales channels had booked premium package as an extra. Which means they paid extra for an apron, book and taxi, (*which was an option to buy all of this on the spot, too) . As the tour basically does not include these extras, such as a taxi to the hotel, our guest usually asked us to call them a taxi to take them back to the hotel or anywhere in the city, paying with a card to the driver. Glad it was arranged and you got complementary ride back to the market. ( I have been trying for weeks to get Viator to correct this misleading information to change it, but it doesnt work yet:( ,so I have to inform all our guests in advance when they book their tour.)
I am also happy the Chef tried to feel you better, and served you some Unicum, which is not part of the program, but really sad that you had to have it in the "lobby".
I am terrible sorry for all of your discomfort. I would be happy to send you a copy of our nice Hungarian Classics cookbook, hoping to make your memories a little bit nicer this way.
Thanks again for sharing your opinions and experiences, we will use them to make our class better.