Paulding & Company

We had our holiday culinary team building experience at Paulding & Company and what a fantastic, memorable event! Well organized, prepared delicious three-​course dinner and to know that we were on the set of the home kitchen for Top Chef SF! On behalf of Pinole Family Dental, thank you so much for a great evening!

This review is long overdue. I was planning a team-​building event for a group of 10 from my office — I found Paulding & Company online and was convinced by all the great reviews. Well, I’m adding another great review — our whole group had a wonderful time, learned some delicious new recipes and overall had a lot of fun. Terry was easy to work with — from the initial planning and deciding on the menu, through to the event itself. She even emailed me the recipes after the event to share with everyone who attended. I highly recommend Paulding & Company and wouldn’t hesitate to hold another event there in the future.

Terry Paulding made her kitchen a very comfortable place to cook in (especially for a person like me who is foreign to cooking). She is extremely helpful and welcoming. The food was absolutely delicious, cooked by our group that went to her kitchen, but it couldn’t have been good without her directions and help. Definitely suggest this place for a good bonding experience and good food!

Came here with my work. It was a great experience learning how to make different types of food (appetizers, salads, entrees, desserts) and then eating everything we made! My group was responsible for making pasta from scratch. Such hard work is involved in making it. Putting the egg in the flour, mixing it, kneading it to the right consistency, and then stretching it out, and cutting it. Had lots of fun! i wouldn’t mind work paying for us to go again.

We had a great experience! We came as a Marketing team for a team building event. We broke into small groups and cooked a 3-​course meal alongside a professional chef of more than 30 years — corn bisque, roasted chicken with stuffing and gravy and green beans, chocolate soufflé with crème anglaise. In between we did a quick fire challenge. Learned a lot of useful tips. Overall it was really fun, interesting, and delicious!

You’re probably looking at all these 5-​star reviews and wondering: Is this place too good to be true?
Well, it isn’t. It’s worthy of every star it’s received.
Terry Paulding got me out of a big jam a couple of weeks ago when I was closing in on a 26-​person team-​building event and was quickly running out of options. My boss had his heart set on a food-​related event, but every company/​kitchen I could find was either unavailable or was simply not a good fit for our group.
The clock was ticking and I was at a loss, until word-​of-​mouth led me to Terry.
She was flexible, friendly, communicative, and extremely helpful. I had never organized this type of event so I peppered her with questions, calls, and emails, all of which she fielded with patience and charm. Then, in the days leading up to yesterday’s event, she kept in regular contact with me, which put my mind at great ease.
Yesterday afternoon, Terry had the beer and wine we delivered (it’s BYOB) on ice and ready for us as we walked in the door. She greeted us with a bit of history on her kitchen and an overview of how the next few hours would unfold. She had us laughing and feeling immediately at ease.
We broke up into four groups, each group overseen by a trained chef. My group’s chef was Samantha, who struck a nice balance between guiding us and being very present, while still prompting us to learn, experiment, and make our own decisions.
Each group created three tapas dishes from recipes provided. Some of the dishes we made were mini chicken empanadas, gougeres stuffed with tequila-​lime shrimp salad, papatas bravas, hiramasa crudo, grilled flank steak with chimichurri, and piquillo peppers stuffed with goat cheese.
Terry’s philosophy for our event was to include a small element of competition but to keep the primary focus on collaboration. So from the ingredients in their three respective dishes, each team created a fourth competition dish. That worked perfectly for us… there was just enough friendly rivalry!
Ultimately, the event was a rousing success. And it felt really good to work with someone who obviously has great pride in what she has built. We loved that she and her team sat down and ate dinner with us. I cannot recommend Terry, her facility, and her wonderful team of chefs enough.
Five big, tasty stars!

Terry & Francisco led a great Bastille Day cooking class for our staff of 16. They had a great space and were patient with our multiple levels of kitchen experience. The tables were set beautifully and they joined us for our delicious 3 course meal.
To start, we made a trio of starters: mussel & leeks with saffron, an artichoke and fennel conserve with scallop crudo and a mini nicoise salad. The main course was a salmon paillard with cilantro butter, watercress and spiced coucous. To finish, we had a fresh blueberry tart with a fabulous crème fraîche ice cream I’m still thinking about.
What a warm and welcoming place. We will be back!

Because we were forced to let go of our original caterer, my wife and I hired Paulding and Co. to cater our wedding reception just two weeks before the date (please do not try this at home!). Terry Paulding and her team somehow managed to pull this off with amazing grace and with results that impressed some of the pickiest foodies we know. My wife and I think it might be some of best food we’ve ever had.
Our request wasn’t simple. We needed food to please my vegetarian bride, several important vegetarian guests, as well as the many omnivorous guests; do so on a strict budget; and we needed it in two weeks. Not only did Paulding and Co. deliver, they also accommodated several of our special requests and suggestions. One of such said requests, beef braised in Barolo, was incredibly delicious, and rivaled some of my best renditions of the dish. If I had to complain about something, I’d say that I thought the orzo salad, which was just delicious, could have used just a touch more salt for my taste, but I still enjoyed it very much. Another brilliant success was the Torta Verde with chard, sweet potatoes (by special request), feta cheese and onion, in a stretched dough crust, which was just amazing!
The food was delicious, the service was better than we could have ever hoped, and Terry kept it within the budget we talked about. I wish we had just called Paulding first.
Terry Paulding and crew, thanks for helping to make my wedding reception go so smoothly. You really helped to make it special. I wish you all nothing but success and happiness in the future.

Terry catered a Memorial Day weekend party at my home in Danville and did an outstanding job. The food was excellent and the service was very professional. My guests really enjoyed the quality of the food and the creativity of the dishes.
Started with passed appetizers and then a buffet style dinner. BLT lettuce bites, Dungeness crab on endive leaves, prosciutto wrapped asparagus, spiced lamb meatballs were the appetizers. We had sauteed shrimp, rack of lamb, roasted vegetables, orzo salad, and a spinach salad for the buffet. Finished with a nice selection of bite size desserts which disappeared faster than I could get one. I guess for our crowd a few more desserts would be needed next time.
I would highly recommend using them for your catering needs.

Paulding and friends are amazing with both the food and the people! Keep it up gals!

YUM!
so, i’ve been MIA from Unilocal for about two months now. after i finished law school, there was bar studying to do. and once that was over, i had to get 100% into working-​fulltime mode. which is an awful mode to be in. but because of that, i haven’t been Unilocaling as much (or at all).
so my return to Unilocal will be with a review of Paulding & Co :)
my boyfriend’s old frat brother recently got married, and after a gorgeous ceremony in scotland (in a castle, no less!) they decided to host a dinner party for some of their good friends back here in california. well, turns out the groom’s mom owns this lovely kitchen, where they’ve done amazing things. they filmed the first season of top chef here. they trained the chefs/​producers who made the animated movie ratatouille. they hold rehearsal dinners and cooking classes here. it’s just wonderful. the kitchen itself is well spread out with large tables so you can imagine a fun yet intimate cooking experience would occur here. there is a separate seating area with about 6 – 7 tables, each seating approximately 8 people. and it’s just really cute. a great idea for a rehearsal dinner. a great idea for a corporate «get to know each other» retreat/​event. and the owner, terry, is so nice and friendly.
i feel extremely privileged that i got to eat a meal cooked by terry and her staff. the food was amazingggg. scallops, chinese brocolli with beef, lobster mac n’ cheese. YUM. i stuffed myself.
my only tip: mapquest/​googlemaps will guide you wrong. this place is on the opposite side of the street from where it should be! a bigger sign might be handy. so if you get lost, just go the other direction on the street and you’ll find it :)

I’ve been taking classes from Terry off and on since 1999. My first few seasons of classes were at her shared kitchen on Hollis in Emeryville, just down the street from her «new» kitchen. It was shared with Bette’s Oceanview Diner, a wedding cake maker, and June Taylor Preserves… yum. When I started taking classes I was 23, new in the kitchen, and intimidated by cooking in general, and especially with trying to cook new things. Now I’m 33 (almost 34), and feel like I can hold my own in the kitchen, and I’m not intimidated to try new recipes. I attribute my love for food and cooking first and foremost to my mother, but Terry gets some of the credit too. She’s opened my eyes to all the other things I can try to recreate in my kitchen and gave me the confidence to actually do it.
Terry’s a great instructor, and she puts together meals that are out of your comfort zone, but still easy to recreate at home. I have a stack of her recipes in my cupboard that I always refer to.
I’ve since started taking classes from Rosetta Costantino in Terry’s kitchen as well. I love these classes too.
All in all, Terry offers a great service, either with classes, catering, or private events at her kitchen. Just talking about this, makes me want to go sign up for more classes. FUN!

We had our rehearsal dinner here and I’m pretty pleased. Working with Terry is a snap — she really listened to what we wanted to accomplish. My big thing was I wanted people to try out new ingredients, learn something, have fun and have good foods for vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, and pollotarians (i just made that up).
So, call up Terry and you go check out the kitchen. Talk menus, try out some food that’s around (she picked tomatoes from the garden and made some gnocchi… yum) and then you get a proposal. The proposal includes all food, linens, plates, glassware, chef instructors, white aprons, water, ice tea, coffee etc. It’s BYOB and we brought in a few cases and then ran out and ran to Periscope next door for a refill.
The event went off without a hitch — eveyone really had a great time and loved watching my grandma chase around my uncle and I had a really fun time working with my Mother in Law making pastry dough.
I def agree to poke around to all of the tables — I ended up taking photos about half way through and really enjoyed watching and learning from everyone. Everyone had a great time and I couldn’t be happier.

Went to a rehearsal dinner here. It was a lot of fun and it was a good way to have people mingle. They accommodated us vegans well, as a few things were veg to start and a few others they just made some vegan versions on the quick. All that I had was excellent.
Big Tip: If you are a cook and want to actually learn things here, try to get involved with as many of the dishes as you can. We had a lot of people at my station, so I just chopped a lot of garlic and a few other things. But after my team was doing OK I poked my nose into the other dishes at the station and learned a few things. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, as they have a lot of info there to tell you.

I just had my company party at Paulding and OMG it’s fantastic! Everyone is super nice and fun and I learned something new to cook! I can’t wait to return for the fondue Friday!!! You gotta go and experience it. My wife and I loved it and will be back for more fun! Oh and ohhhh so good!!!

We just hosted our second annual client appreciation cooking class with Terry. She was able to coordinate with Periscope Cellars (winery next door) for us to do a wine tasting before the cooking was to begin. We had a tapas menu that Terry worked with me on beforehand. Our clients had a great time and can not wait for next years invite.

I just celebrated my 40^th birthday at Paulding and Co and it was an evening my friends and I will remember for a long time. I now feel like the popular kid in highschool! :) My friends/​co workers are still raving what a great idea, fun experience and overall great time they had.
Terry Paulding is the owner/​chef of this fun place. She was great to work with and helped to plan a menu with lots of variety, textures, flavors and overall very accommodating to my requests and budget. Also, the recipes used were not overly complex and something my friends will make again on their own…
She also helped create an ‘ice breaker’ for my guest by arranging small groups, demonstrating basic knife techniques and having a «quickfire challenge» of chopping, dicing, ingredients, etc… That helped to get people involved, talking with one another and just have fun.
This is definitely a great place to take a cooking class, plan a private event or arrange a team building session for work… i would definitely do it again! I might have to make this an annual event as my friends are still talking about how much fun they had. Thanks Teri and Tracie for helping me plan such a great event!

I recently had the opportunity to attend a corporate team building session at Paulding & Company with 19 other of my co-​workers, and the whole experience was great! We had split ourselves up into 4 different teams, and each team was responsible for preparing a dinner course, based on recipes and guidance provided by Chef Terry (company founder) and Chef Cisco. The teams learned how to prepare salads, main course, vegetables, and desserts during the 3-​hour session, and got to dine on the delicious foods that we prepared and chatted with the two chefs at the dinner table.
Bottom Line: It was a good experience to not just be able to learn something new, but it also worked well in promoting and building teamwork among coworkers.

Love love love her classes! So much fun. Not intimidating or snotty at all! As a newbie I’ve learned a lot about cooking and I’m much more comfortable with myself as a cook. You get some great hands on instruction plus you get to eat what you make as a group. A friend took a $$$ class in napa and said this was definitely more bang for the buck overall. I’ve made good friends and had a great time with her cooking club series. I plan on taking it again this winter.

You might not be worthy enough to be a Cheftestant on Top Chef (I know I’m not), but you can take cooking classes in the kitchen used for season one of the BravoTV reality cooking contest. That’s right – although the setting appeared to be San Francisco on the show, the actual Top Chef kitchen was located in Emeryville in Paulding and Company’s Creative Kitchen. This probably explains why they went shopping nearby at Berkeley Bowl. Terry Paulding, the founder, is a great teacher. She even taught the animators at Pixar who worked on Ratatouille how to cook so that they could accurately depict a working kitchen in the film. I’m currently taking one of her classes through the Piedmont Adult School which is ridiculously affordable compared to all the other cooking schools in the area. Terry also offers catering services and team building events hosted at her kitchen.