One of the challenges of a supper club is when one of the guests is a chef or is the one that wrote the menu. This can be intimidating to some hosts. Consequently, quite often chefs don’t get asked to dinner.
I am not a chef. I have been lucky to work with great chefs so I know what I am not. I have been cooking for years and have written this book so people think I know what I am doing. I also know that I intimidate some people when it comes to food. I will even admit that I can be an asshole, hopefully a good asshole. I certainly don’t want to make people nervous.
A good example of this involves Lucien Vendome. He is a world-renowned chef, a brilliant guy and my good friend. We used to work together at Kraft and Susan and I would invite him over for dinner. At first, I insisted that he not cook at my house. My thought was he was my guest and I didn’t want him to cook. This didn’t work. Lucien was more comfortable cooking. Cooking together worked really well.
Lucien was a central to the original “Impromptu Friday Nights” crew. We got into the routine of him stopping by my office around 3 pm on a Friday afternoon. He would ask: “Are you and Susan in town this weekend?” To which I would respond: “The usual suspects?” After getting clearance from the war department (my wife Susan), Susan would call four other wives to invite them. Then Lucien and I would start planning. There were three amazing things that would happen:
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Susan would get the house ready. The fact that she would agree to hosting a dinner party on such short notice was amazing and a credit to her flexibility.
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Nine out ten times the four couples that got invited at four would show up at seven. These guys all had big corporate jobs that had them traveling the world. Somehow it was serendipity. Whenever we would host an “Impromptu Friday Nights”, everyone would show up.
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Lucien and I would pull together an amazing meal in very short order. We would make things like chicken Milanese that could be made “a la minute” or very quickly.
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Check out the recipe:
While inviting chefs and authors can be intimidating it can also be a lot of fun and chances are you, like me will learn something.
If you enjoy this blog and similar other stories/supper club lessons subscribe to get future blogs at www.impromptufridaynights.com/blog and be on the look out for my book Impromptu Friday Nights a Guide to Supper Clubs due out from Morgan James Publishing on January 30, 2018.