How to have a Secret Supper Club (small scale)

Blog, boy did our family have big fun hosting our first Secret Supper Club.  What's a Secret Supper Club, you ask?  Well, technically it's like having a one-night, private restaurant in your home, where foodies gather to sample a single menu of culinary delights.  They may be friends or friends of friends, but typically an SSC includes more like 25-50 diners.  We went small scale for ours, including our family of four plus the awesome boyfriends.  But what we lacked in size, we made up for in ambiance.

To get the ambiance of our SSC, you could start by launching this recording of Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly with Me."  That'll give you the fun, jazzy, slightly elegant, 60's-style vibe we strove for at Magic House for the occasion.  Hit it, Mr. Chairman!

Our first floor was decked out in classic autumnal/Halloween decorations, and I tweaked the lighting to go for a nightclub atmosphere.  (It worked...Manzi commented, "It looks like Blu [hip downtown club] in here!")  Manzi provided tunes from her old standards CD collection, so we enjoying the musical stylings of Dean Martin and Bobby Darin along with Frank.  For your SSC, pick any era/theme that works for you and your guests!  (I'd like to go for Big Band next time.)

Completely optional for your Secret Supper Club:  cats.

We kept to the theme with the bar service, as I offered specialty drinks for the night chosen from AMC's "Mad Men," classic 60s drinks.  Here's the menu:

And the bar prepped for business:

Theme-oriented clothing was an option for guests (I don't mean "clothing was optional," Blog...SSC is not that kind of a get-together).  I wore a cocktail dress and Manzi went for a 60's mod look. 

Katie looked sharp as always...

...and the guys (as guys will do) were more casual but still nice.  For your SSC, you can leave the style vs. comfort option up to your guests too.

Our dining table comfortably seats six so that was the perfect number for our party.  You may want to go with china and white linens for a more traditional supper club look, or seasonal like we did with our autumnal colors.

Of course first and foremost, Secret Supper Club is about great food.  You don't have to, but we made our SSC pot luck style, because we have a lot of great cooks in our family.  The execution and serving of the meal can be made more enjoyable (we confirmed) if (1) people prep as much in advance as possible, and (2) you serve by courses, which means not too many people in the kitchen at once.  It's also nice to spread the meal out over the evening:  ours took about three hours from start to finish.

Up first was Nate, who prepared the most delectable and unreal appetizer:  tuna tostadas.  He lightly seared some sushi-quality tuna, and served it sliced thin on corn tortilla pieces, topped with black bean and mango salsa, roasted red pepper sauce, and avocado vinagrette.  Absolutely divine, Blog.  We each enjoyed two or three pieces while enjoying our cocktails in the living room.

The next course, eaten at the table, was Katie's pumpkin bacon soup.  She made this delectable, creamy concoction with the perfect combination of subtle autumnal seasonings, a little kick of cayenne, and the best bacon in Wisconsin, Nueske's. 

Words cannot describe the deliciousness of this soup, Blog...I would love to have a bathtub full.  Nevertheless, note that smaller servings are key to a Secret Supper Club that won't leave you gorged and logey!

The main course included:  My salad (a copycat of the chop salad at Maggiano's, with bleu cheese, prosciutto, red onion, a nummy vinagrette, and homemade garlic croutons)....

...Manzi's brie orzo (creamy, rich, and scrumptious)....and a chicken stir fry with orange teriyaki flavors that was technically Chris's dish but prepared by Katie in the kitchen (so, so tasty with that sauce).

After a bit of clean up, we retired to the living room again for coffee and dessert, that being Davie's contribution of chocolate tiramisu.  The tiramisu connaisseurs among us (myself included) thought it was the best version they had ever tasted.  Davie used a recipe from Giada De Laurentiis, which we tweaked slightly, replacing the marsala with half creme de cacoa, half Starbucks coffee liqueur, and replacing the espresso with very strong coffee in the Highlander Grogg flavor from Berres Brothers.  So, so, SO delish!

Add to the evening our hysterical conversation in response to Chris's prompt, "If you could put any musical act onto a plane that was going to crash, who would you choose?", and you have the picture of a perfect Secret Supper Club.  Needless to say, we had some very opposing opinions of ABBA, Phil Collins, and the Eagles.

So, Blog, you may be wondering how, in essence, a Secret Supper Club differs from a dinner party.  My answer:  it's all in how you look at it!  The whole point is to look at it as a very special occasion, and do a few little things to make it so.  I'll tell you, the fact that four of the evening's dishes made our Favorite Foods Ever List (the appetizer, the soup, the orzo and the tiramisu) didn't hurt. 

And what made it the most special was that special people made it and enjoyed it together!

The unfortunate limits to my powers

I have a recurring problem that you may have noticed, Blog: I’m forever discovering things I want to do and am perfectly willing to attempt them in an untrained, unskilled manner on the off chance I can do them anyway. This approach to life has worked pretty well for me.

The results are not always worthy of ovations; see the response to my attempt at doing a cartoon—or lack thereof. Similarly, back in the 80’s I taught myself a couple of years of piano and composed a theme and variations for pipe organ that I was personally unable to play. It was performed at our church because (a) my husband at the time was the pastor and (b) the organist was my best friend. The piece was good enough to not embarrass me, but not a soul came up to me after the service with kudos either.

Still, I get a certain satisfaction from doing these things whether other people are impressed or not, which I think is as it should be, Blog. I’ve made beer (decent) and mead (awful), so I tell myself I have something in common with the cool people who produce spirits from scratch. I’ve been in a few musicals, which of course is huge in my world. I’ve spoken French (feebly) in two interviews on Quebec TV and radio, which made me feel I was a true Francophone albeit briefly. Even my horrendously bad attempt to learn to rollerblade made me feel like I could relate to hockey players.

All that said, there are some things I know I really can’t do. Or at least, my being able to do them pathetically only frustrates me because I really want to be able to do them well. And here are a few examples of the ones that bug me the most, and the Lame Substitutions I must do instead.

Sing in a rock band. I can sing decently as referenced above, and I have even played guitar a tiny bit, but even if I was 24 again there isn’t a garage band in the country that would have me. One time I borrowed a friend’s bass and he showed me how to play the bass line from The Police song “Walking on the Moon.” I thought that would help, Blog, but it only made me more bummed that I will go to my grave without ever being Linda Ronstadt in her Stone Poneys days.


Lame Substitution: I guess instead of playing guitar I could sew one, like this admittedly cool one from The Grateful Thread. They make and sell softie guitars as well as “Monsters of Rock” soft toys.

Do 3D Illustration with DAZ software. My illustrator friend CC Rogers does this and is an absolute pro. Problem is, not only does it take mad artistic skilz, which I can muster to a modest level, but you also need to understand all the complexities of the software that are used in posing, lighting, etc. In short, you kind of have to be an engineer. Which I am so not.


Lame Substitution: I did have good time creating portraits of most of the characters in my books and stories. I used a much simpler software program called FaceGen in conjunction with Photoshop. I thought the results were good enough to merit my using them in the fortune telling cards I published (Diana’s Deck). But to be honest, Blog, being able to do decent character heads is a far cry from the stuff CC does. Sigh.

Be a gourmet chef. I’m a decent enough cook, and in fact not too long ago I thought gourmet cooking was a hobby of mine. That was until my younger daughter, Amanda aka Manzi, grew up. The girl who survived on Hot Pockets until she was 20 suddenly became obsessed with the Food Network and now she’s all about cooking stuff like Shrimp Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce. For my 50th birthday, 24-year-old Manzi (with sister Katie as sous chef/food photographer/scrapbook chronicler) catered a six-course food and wine pairings dinner for ten that would have impressed Tom Colicchio. I just can’t compete with that.  Oh, and I can’t scrapbook either.

Lame Substitution: I do try to cook in a tasty fashion anyway, Blog. It may not be frequent, but I’ve been known to make stuff like grilled lime tequila shrimp now and again. And I certainly do make Alton Brown-style turkey every Thanksgiving.

Be a fantasy sculptor. OMG, Blog, a couple days ago I discovered the most amazing polymer clay sculptor, Nicole West. Her dolls absolutely blow my mind. I mean, how does she make eyes like that? And how do they come out looking like perfect porcelain? She even gives them details like fingernails and tiny teeth and stuff. Oy vay, you have to go to her site and look at them, I’m serious, they define the laws of everything. Nicole’s work is so gorgeous that of course, I fall back on my usual reaction of “is there any possible way I could do something even remotely like this?” In this case I’m sure you will join in my enthusiastic chorus of “NO POSSIBLE WAY.”

Lame Substitution: There’s no substitution for something as fabulous as Nicole West’s dolls, Blog, so give up now.

Well, there are more examples but I’m bummed enough already, Blog. I don’t know where I got the “That-Looks-Cool-I’m-Gonna-Do-It-Too” gene, but there it is, all day-glo pink and unignorable in my DNA.

[And yes, I’m going to try sculpting some faces in polymer clay. Do I hear the strains of “What Kind of Fool Am I?”]