A Clandestine Affair: Charleston's Underground Kitchen

Last weekend, I experienced yet another first in my life. I paid money to eat a mystery dinner with +/- 29 people I'd never met before in a secret location.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Underground Kitchen.

Charleston's Underground Kitchen describes itself as "...a giant, infrequent dinner party involving strangers and amateur cooks who like good food and don’t mind making a few new friends." Who on earth would not be intrigued by this claim?

I learned about Underground Kitchen from the blogosphere, of all places. Being a newcomer to Charleston, I've poked around on the Internet quite a bit over the last couple months. I've found that the best way to learn about a city's offerings is to find the local bloggers. While perusing a local blog aggregator one evening, I noticed the term "underground kitchen" popping up in a couple different spots, and my interest was immediately piqued. Like a bloodhound, I followed the scent right to The Underground Kitchen's website. After reading how it worked and admiring the site's design (a well-designed website goes a long way with me), I wasted no time signing up for the invite list.

Within a couple days, I received an e-mail from The Underground Kitchen announcing the date for their next affair. "I should do this," I thought. Mom has been telling me I need to get out and meet people, and she's never given me bad advice. I've known this as well, but really haven't felt up to it. The Underground Kitchen, I decided, would be just the catalyst I needed. So, I did the following:

1. Paid $40.00 of my hard-earned scratch to someone I'd never met, let alone heard of, via PayPal.
   
2. Immediately wondered if I'd just given $40.00 of my hard-earned scratch to a pimply-faced Belarusian teenage genius with an affinity for illegal-in-most-countries Internet porn and pirated MP3s.
   
3. Shrugged and waited for further instruction.
   

Between the time I paid for my reservation and received the e-mail disclosing the supersecretninja location, I told anyone and everyone who would listen about what I had just signed myself up for. Everyone's reaction can be summed up as follows: "Wow, really? That sounds SO cool. Wait... this is in Charleston?" Having never been to anything like this, I wasn't sure how to accurately describe it. "Well," I'd say, "I think it's kind of like a rave, without the candy kids. Or like Eyes Wide Shut, without the whole freaky, masked orgy thing going on*. I won't know where it is until a couple days before, and I won't know who will be there or what we'll be eating until I arrive." Needless to say, everyone I talked to about it was intrigued.

Fast-forward to last Saturday, when I pulled into the parking lot of Charleston's Habitat for Humanity ReStore with a chilled bottle of wine and a major case of the butterflies. A couple days before the event, I was talking with Bridget on the phone and nervously telling her that I felt certifiably insane for making my first social outing in Charleston a mystery dinner party with 30 strangers. She stated in her calming, matter-of-fact way, "Dinner with 30 strangers is a lot less scary than dinner with three strangers." A genius observation, and exactly what I needed to hear. As I walked to the door I chanted in my head, "30 is less scary than three. 30 is less scary than three." And I was golden. I even squashed the urge to declare, "Fidelio!" as I made my presence known.

I walked in to a dark-ish warehouse, atmospheric in its string-lights and candle-lit dimness, the hum of fans (it was a hot evening and the venue was not air conditioned), laughter and various conversations, and the most amazing smells ever. I was greeted by one of the chefs and introduced to the other, who was feverishly chopping what looked like cilantro. My first impression of the non-chopping chef was that this guy seems like he never meets a stranger, and I felt immediately at ease. Both of these guys were genuinely friendly, despite being in the throes of cooking for 30 people in a warehouse. These people seemed cool. I was not going to need my brass knuckles after all.

After putting my name on a sticker and a place card, I went over to the wine chilling station and just started talking. I'm an interrogator's dream come true... when I get nervous, I talk. So talk I did. And I met some very cool people in the process. I'm horrible at remembering names, but was able to piece some names together with websites and blogs I'd visited or people I'd seen on Twitter. At that moment I realized, once again, what a trip the world wide web is.

Dinner was a study in social engineering; place cards had been strategically set to ensure that people who knew each other well were not seated directly next to each other. I was seated in a wonderful little pocket of guests, as I'm sure the entire table was. The people in my immediate vicinity were warm, welcoming, friendly and excellent conversationalists. Several topics were breached, and nobody's delicate sensibilities were offended, no insults were hurled, nobody burst into tears. I felt very comfortable and happy among what felt like were like-minded individuals.

And then there was the food. Let's talk about food. Okay, so these cats refer to themselves as amateur cooks... and I guess in the literal sense, they are. Do not mistake amateur for average, though, or even just pretty good. The food they prepared was excellent on a technical level, but more importantly, it was creative. Flavorful, inventive and freakin' delicious. The courses were as follows:

• Appetizer: Curried Chicken Salad with Walnuts & Cranberries and Curried Pea Dip
  
• Salad: Roasted Corn & Orzo Salad with Goat Cheese and Ginger/Tomatillo Sauce
  
• Entree: Grouper with Zucchini Cakes and Stewed Tomatoes & Olives
  
• Dessert: Chilled Pear Soup with Walnuts and Honey (I think)
  

A few things. First, the curried pea dip looked kind of like guacamole but I could not, for the life of me, place the flavor. It wasn't guacamole. Not even a hint of avocado, and a completely different consistency. Now that I know it was peas, I'm like, "DUH! PEAS!" When it's not easy to immediately place a flavor, you know something's been made both creatively and skillfully. Second, I love goat cheese. I love ginger. I love tomatillo sauce. NEVER would I think to put all three together. Yet, it worked magically.

I managed to take a few snaps, before the wine and food buzz really kicked in and I felt too jolly to be taking photos. Behold:


Our top secret location


People who actively seek out dinner parties at classified locations


Beautiful and tasty vittles

So, to sum up, The Underground Kitchen is a must-do if you like mystery, intrigue, good people and amazing food. The aspect of raising awareness for Habitat for Humanity was a really cool angle as well. Local readers, you have to try it. Just don't secure your reservation before I secure mine. And out-of-state friends and family, if one of your visits coincides with an installment of The Underground Kitchen, you can bet your sweet ass(es) I'll be taking you with me. Every city would benefit from something like this.

Finally, read about the evening from the perspective of the UGK Maestros themselves. I love, love, love that they gave a nod to Bridget's sage words of nerve-calming advice (a story I repeated several times throughout the evening with my rosy-cheeked, wine-buzzarded self).

Not even remotely scary... absolutely, deliciously cool. Right here in Charleston.

Edited to add: Local restaurant critiquing crew, Fork You Blog, have posted their take on the experience at Fork You Blog. It's a fun read.

*I can not vouch for what may or may not have happened after I left.

The Kindness of Strangers

I love PostSecret. I read it every Sunday morning. Some of the secrets depress me; others make me laugh out loud. Some make me cringe and some I really identify with. Some, at the risk of sounding like a jerk, I believe to be made up and not actual secrets. Others are so dark I can't imagine anyone making them up. Some are bright and simple; noting the happiness found in life's little surprises.

Today's secrets included one that reminded me I have some thanking of strangers to do.



The same thing happened to me twice last winter, and I have often wondered who came to my assistance. I'll never know, but I will always be grateful.

Unlike the person who sent this postcard in, I did not have a seizure. I don't know what happened to me either time. For the time being, I am chalking it up to exhaustion. I had a lot of mentally, emotionally and physically demanding things going on this past winter. I tend to think I am invincible and can take on anything and everything. Human nature, I suppose.

Here in Charleston, I collapsed in the Town Center mall. In Kansas City, I hit the bricks right before boarding a flight at KCI. I don't remember either incident. In Kansas City, however, I did experience something like the "my entire life flashing before my eyes" phenomenon that people sometimes experience. It wasn't nearly as dramatic as it is made out to be in movies. I can't remember exactly what I "saw" but I do remember it was just a bunch of random, seemingly inconsequential snapshots of places and things I recognized.

No matter how sane we are in our waking lives, our brains are crazy and complex things.

Anyway, when I got the ambulance bills a few months later, both referred to a 911 call being the source of dispatch. There was something strangely touching about that. I know that sounds cheesy, but I was filled with gratitude and (even more cheesy) love for whomever made those calls. I know it's something I would do if I saw someone go base over apex and lose consciousness. I know it's something pretty much any human being would do. But when you're the one that is in need of help, knowing that someone was paying attention and made the effort to call for help really means a lot. It's hard to be vulnerable like that, and it's a very uncomfortable realization that I was unconscious in unfamiliar places, by myself, surrounded by strangers. I don't like to think about it, but I do often think about the people who helped me, and I wish I could thank them. Since I can't thank them in person, I'll just send it out to the universe via my blog.

Dear persons who helped me when I needed it,
Thank you.

On Hotel Living

One more thing to cross off my list of things to do in life: Live in a hotel.



Living in this hotel has turned me into such an old lady. I'm a major grandma up in here. I get home from work, I watch the local news, I watch NBC nightly news, and then I watch Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy!. By the time Jeopardy! is over, I am at a nodding-off point. I get up, putter around, and then fall asleep with the TV on. Watching TV in bed is a HUGE luxury for me. Having a TV in the bedroom is something I've always been fiercely against but am often tempted by, so I am enjoying it while it lasts.

That said, I'll be glad when it's over. The movers will have my stuff up here on Friday or Saturday and I'll get settled into my new dwelling. At the same time, though, it's been pretty cool to be here. It's forced me to unwind during my off hours. Having someone bring me clean towels and wash my dishes never gets old. I have a dedicated housekeeper here, and she is a living doll. She leaves Banjo! little treats and leaves me neatly-stacked pyramids of Hershey's chocolates. One day she even left a toy for Banjo! accompanied by a very sweet hand-written note.



And, yes, Banjo! totally loves it. Housekeeper Terry will be getting a huge tip.



The downside to the hotel lifestyle is that every so often there are guests who are loud all night long making for a night with little to no sleep. Also, it's expensive. In case anyone was wondering, it's around $2,500 to stay at a Residence Inn for a month. Considering the circumstances, though, it's been worth it. I had time to find a cool place to rent in a neighborhood I'll be happy in, and I've been able to get some rest after months of craziness. I think the hotel is cheaper than the hospital for "tired people", which is where I was inevitably headed.

Come to think of it, I'm really going to miss this place...