Supping on the Sly

By Warren Rojas

Secret Suppers

Those who savor the theater of dining as much as fine cuisine are sure to enjoy food columnist Jenn Garbee’s “Secret Suppers,” an expose on the closed-door dining clubs that have popped up all over the country.

As part of her investigation, Garbee infiltrates 10 clandestine venues stretching from the Pacific Northwest to right here in our nation’s capital (Hush), offering up over three dozen recipes gleaned from the covert cooks in charge.

Along the way, she encounters all kinds of personalities and culinary curiosities, including: cryptic doodles-cum-dining clues in Brooklyn, N.Y. (“In the hallway is a plain white piece of printer paper with a crudely drawn whisk and an arrow pointing to the left”), an outlaw Oregonian whose custom remixes (“One night he’ll mix up the James Bond theme song on the same CD with Britney Spears’s “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman” … the next night it’s Frank Zappa, ZZ Top and the Foo Fighters together”) nourish music aficionados as well as industrious ex-pat locals (Austin’s Supper Underground was founded by Virginia native Hannah Calvert).

Noteworthy recipes include: heirloom cherry-tomato jam (an all-purpose pleaser), bacon-wrapped bacon (think pork belly, rice wine and brown sugar), Wagyu steak, duck eggs and creamy leek potatoes (breakfast never had it so good) and “oatmeal on the rocks” (a vodka-powdered potable).

“Secret Suppers: Rogue Chefs & Underground Restaurants in Warehouses, Townhouses, Open Fields and Everywhere in Between.” Jenn Garbee. Sasquatch Books, 256 pgs., $18.95

(December 2008)

Tags: Chew on this, food for thought