Conversation is dying according to London-based thinker Alain de Botton so he decided to try and revive it and opened the School of Life. He teaches us How to Have Better Conversations, because, if you follow his argument, we no longer know how to read or respond to body language as there are no bodies to read, only online versions (curated and filtered) of how we want to present and communicate.
Around a table filled with good food, wine and generosity, it is difficult to avoid human contact. We sit around tables to initiate romantic liaisons, to strengthen, and sometimes test family ties, and to reinforce old and start new friendships.
So where are these tables that allow for this interaction? Family dinners are naturally private affairs and romantic liaisons are limited to two (in the corner table or on the couch). In restaurants, being able to spontaneously join conversations at other tables is unheard of (and will risk getting you thrown out). And the late-night conversations you have around tables in burger/pizza/taco/kebab joints are thankfully hazy the morning after.
The last decade has witnessed the setting of a new table around which conversation and human interaction is natural instinctive. The supper club is a phenomenon that emerged in response to demands of a creative breed of chef desperate to find outlets for their passion other than the $-driven restaurant model. And the adventurous diner seeking out the hottest new food experience was only two happy to join, knife and fork firmly in hand.
Supper clubs are a dining experience created entirely through the eyes of the chef. The chef selects the venue — their own home, or a private and unique space (think art galleries, design stores, boats, vacant parking lots, and secret gardens). Next the chef creates a menu, not limited by economics, restaurant logistics, monotone palettes or brand expectations. They have a clean dish on which to plate their most aggressively imaginative culinary visions. The supper club also removes the ‘pass’ (the famous bar that separates the chefs from the front of house), in effect making the chef the master of his domain (props to Seinfeld and ‘The Contest’).
‘Chef’ doesn’t mean that you’re the best cook, it simply means ‘boss.’ Tom Colicchio
The food entrepreneur (being a chef is not enough to run a supper club) must create the entire beast. Think seating, lighting, menu design, logo, dinner format, music, reservation policy and everything that transforms four inanimate walls surrounding a kitchen and dining table into a sensorial experience. Supper clubs are the truest representation of the artistic personality that exists deep within every chef, and the reason they have become a veritable phenomena.
The ambitious foodie (since when did we begin to hate this label?) is on a never-ending quest to eat the best meal of their lives; every plate should improve on the last thereby maximising lifetime gluttonic satisfaction. The unpredictability of the supper club makes it particularly enticing, with menus, formats, guest lists and locations always up in the air until the doors open. As food critic and general gastronome A.D Fitzgerald said:
“I’ve been to one nice restaurant, I’ve been to every nice restaurant.”
Diners are exhausted with the tired format restaurants must adhere to if they are to remain viable businesses. Instead the ambitious foodie is seeking out supper clubs where the experience is intimate and shared with the chef and a a select group of like-minded guests in a space tucked away from the unappreciative eyes of those that chew without closing their eyes in delight.
Supper clubs are not only here to stay, but, as chefs seek true autonomy, will become a natural part of every true food entrepreneur’s journey. For the foodie, the gastronome, the gourmand, the bon vivant, glutton, hedonist, epicurean, and just plain hungry, whether you are are traveling or at home, supper clubs deserve feature billing on your bucket list. For those that plan their holidays around their stomachs, here is a list of my favourite supper clubs around the world.
Top Supper Clubs around the World
Since the 1996 Olympics, Barcelona has gentrified to the point where cafes across the city consistently offer almond milk with your coffee. But there is one neighbourhood that retains the city’s original grungy grittiness and wandering through El Raval is, for many, Barcelona in its bare-bones. Raval boasts a ‘mashup’ of cultures and a cacophony of languages, cuisines and energy that makes you question whether you stepped back in time. It’s a beautiful uneasiness that you sometimes miss as the creative elegance of Gaudi drowns you on a daily basis. In Raval, you will also find the Hidden Factory, a space/concept/experience created by two world-class chefs (artists) that fill the kitchen with their mad genius.
For me, Xavi and Nico created the ultimate supper club: underground and undeniably cool, one always arrives with an uneasy excitement. The food, as close to art on a plate as I’ve seen, is created in front of your eyes as you (and a maximum of 11 others) cluster around watching the metaphorical cauldron bubble. But it’s not just the food or the venue that makes this a must for any food hunter, it’s the intimate and multi-sensorial experience that these two construct. You are whisked out of reality for a short delicious moment, think Narnia’s Wardrobe.
Book a seat here and watch, taste and fall under their spell.
My memories of Istanbul involved an exotic combination of Turkish coffee, spice markets and feeling taller and blonder than usual. Istanbul is also the base for Derya, aka Foodie Backpacker, who oozes cool and possesses a brazen freedom that I suppose is the product of growing up under Turkey’s stiflingly restrictive regime (where Twitter and other social media bans happen regularly and on a whim. Derya brings a refreshing vision of the world:
“Now I know what makes me happy and now I know what I should do for it (cook, eat and travel).”
This vision translates into his freeform events that take place not just in Instanbul but around the world. Reviewing his schedule, I am filled wanderlust envy: catering for a wedding in Berlin, a degustation in Amsterdam, rooftop dinner in Barcelona, and then to Asia for a series of popups. His food is at the same time hearty, rustic and with real soul, while also being refined and elegant. The sort of meal that leaves you sated and happy. Find Derya in Istanbul or coming to a city near you soon. With the Foodie Backpacker it’s a case of; “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
My first visit to New York was spent with a group of Swedes who also had the unfortunate luck of staying in the same dungeon-like hostel as me (this was in those sad days before Airbnb existed). We spent four days visiting museums, galleries, and parks then finding Mexican in Lower East Side, brunch in Greenwich Village and giant pizza pies in East Village. But what we missed out on in Brooklyn was a rare Japanese gem that takes the form of Ai.
Her events take takes place in her Brooklyn loft converted to host a weekly supper club for 16. She shocks you out of your frenetic New York pace with a smooth style that packs a flavour punch, easily slicing through the delicate Japanese cliches Bill Murray and Scarlet Johansson perpetuated in Lost in Translation. With Shiso grown on her roof, homemade tofu, ginger-infused kombucha and rockstar plating, Ai offers a truly unique experience for those that don’t yet fully understand that New York is a state of mind.
Add to your New York bucket list now: Ai’s supper club.
My memories of Washington DC, aside from wearing a KPMG-approved suit and pretending to be someone worth taken seriously, involved paddling on the Potomac River and spending hours wandering Dean & Deluca — wide eyed and drooling like the pathetic gourmand I am.
Had I visited in another life when I am more handsome and upwardly mobile, I may have made it into Hush. This exclusive dining society makes the door bitches of LA look like agreeable pussy cats. Booking a seat at the table requires photo submission and those that make the cut enjoy an intimate dining experience featuring Gujarati Jain home cooking and a table limited to 10.
These guys are brash and aggressive and capture the unrelenting Indian beat that Slumdog Millionaire introduced to the world.
Then there is the Paris, the spiritual home of fine dining where one might expect the underground territory that supper clubs inhabit and own get muddied in a slew of white tablecloths and silver cutlery. Aside from the timeless Sunday dinners with Jim Haynes, a new kid on the block has emerged and taken Paris, and the world by storm.
Paris Popup is a gastronomic initiative imagined by Harry Cummins and Laura Vidal who met while working at Frenchie Restaurant. The duo set out to pay homage to the bistronomy movement, executing one-off popups in private and exclusive spaces around Paris. With the addition of Julie Mitton (ex-Experimental Cocktail Club), the team has left behind a wake of gluttonic satisfaction in Montreal, New York, California, Kyoto, Quebec City, Fez, Barcelona and London, to name just a few.
Follow them around the world as they bring create simple bistro classics with French style and global class to tables around the world.
Ah Berlin, the ultimate city for the creative. I have friends that go to Berlin to write a novel, to party five-days straight, to reinspire and to fall in love. One particular proficient multi-tasking friend managed to combine all these into a productive 30 day block. Berlin is also the city that celebrates all that is underground and no-one does this better than Muse and their supper club collective that features regulars from east Berlin like Zuhause and Thyme Supper Club, as well as new chefs and secret spaces around the city.
In a city that knows cool, book a seat at the table and consider it part of your initiation.
In Hong Kong, aside from eating black guilinggao jelly in the Temple Street markets, staying in the mega hostels of Chungking Mansions, and sipping cocktails in the bar of The Peninsula, a visit to the #1 secret dining society in the city needs to be slotted into your itinerary.
Once Upon a Table is a collaboration between four gourmets that combine their passion for traditional home cooking and with a fascination with wines from around the world, to produce exclusive invitation-only dining events. These guys slot perfectly into a city filled with contrasts and extremes and are a must for the gourmet traveler looking to taste the same Hong Kong that one knows is hiding just around the corner.
The day I’m told I’m allergic to olive oil, white anchovies, salted Marcona almonds, fried baby octopus and glistening fat-streaked pata negra jamon, I shall call Tokyo home. Another city obsessed by food, Tokyo’s cool composure contrasts Barcelona’s chaotic passion; I guess my heaven sees me using chopsticks to eat Pulpo a la Gallega and washing it down with chilled Junmai sake. I spent 3 weeks with my friend Hiroshi staying in Shinjuku while lecturing Japanese students on demographics and lifestyle trends.
Aside from savouring the perfect simplicity that comes in the form of Zaru Soba, or slurping through a bowl of Ramen, or letting a perfectly sliced piece of Maguro sashimi melt on your tongue, you must make your way to Takazawa.
Behind an unmarked door in the Akasaka district sit two tables on which master chef Yoshiaki Takazawa paints masterpieces of traditional Japanese cuisine with colours of the future. The feast touches on every taste receptor pushing the umami envelope again and again, but in a natural unhurried way that Michelin-starred chefs with teams of 50 could only dream of hitting. It’s what you imagine when you think of Japan, and what you know exists behind more than one closed door.
The supper club is exciting.
It possesses an unpredictability and tendency to surprise that attracts even the most hardened foodie.
It is as exclusive as it is democratised making it accessible but also happily out of reach of the lazy and unimaginative.
It is social enough to allow for for wild cross-table conversations with diners who just moments ago were strangers.
Yet also offering an intimacy that allows for pleasure to be shared amongst one or savoured alone like the hedonist we all were (or wanted to be) at some point in our lives.
Supper clubs are where wild chefs roam and adventurous foodies hunt.
And while we chew our way to culinary nirvana, communication and connection happens unwittingly. Without ice-breaker topics or name tags, supper clubs are doing their bit to save the dying art of conversation by simply setting the table, filling it with food and love (kind of the same thing) and inviting us to join.
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