Turning Tables: Mumbai's underground kitchen club

Imagine sitting at a stranger’s home, sampling cold gazpacho soup whipped up by one of the city’s best known chefs, and passing a bottle of wine to one of the 20-odd people at the dinner table, none of whom you know too well.

This is Turning Tables, our idea of social networking, a micro-movement that allows people in Mumbai to interact with interesting new people and sample some of the city’s best food, on the cheap.

Launched by Brown Paper Bag late last year, Turning Tables is an underground kitchen club where for one night, a private home is converted into a family-style restaurant, complete with a celebrity chef and patrons, all of whom are strangers.

Srila Chatterjee, who hosted the most recent Turning Tables dinner feels that, "To be able to get new people from completely different backgrounds in a social situation conducive to conversation and quality interaction is a treat. Blue Frog (the restaurant and live music venue where she is partner) got involved because the whole spirit of the Frog is about adventure and enterprise and bringing people together." 

Despite the unknowns inherent in such a gathering -- or perhaps because of them -- we’ve had an overwhelmingly positive response from an eclectic bunch of people: editors and expats, foodies and film-makers, doctors and a fresh-out-of-college 24 year old who promised she could hold her whiskey.

A significant number of guests are also expats. We’ve had a Chinese lady working at the International Financial Corporation, an Australian gentleman working at an NGO, a French corporate lawyer, lots of Indians who’ve moved back from time spent abroad. Anyone without access to mum’s friend's second-cousin connections that Mumbai's social scene thrives on.

But they’re not the only ones. "I grew up in Bombay, and I think in many ways it’s a pretty isolated city. People hang with their friends, and friends of their friends, and there’s really not that many ways to step out of that circle. Turning Tables is a cool way to do just that," says Bob Valy, an entrepreneur in his mid-20s who attended the first dinner, prepared by Kshama Prabhu, executive chef at the Tasting Room.

Also, a lot of foodies get excited at the idea of having a celebrity chef cook for such a small gathering, in their humble kitchen. The meals are much cheaper than what they would pay at the actual restaurant (the per head charge is usually less than half the restaurant price), which is a big bonus. This is also one of the reasons why chefs have jumped at the chance to participate, knowing that they would be compensated for nothing more than the ingredients but lauded for their creativity by a captive audience. 

"This event was right up my alley -- it was food-focused, and gave me the chance to interact with foodies and see first-hand their reaction to the meal I cooked,” explains Mrigank Singh, who heads up the kitchen at Blue Frog and cooked at last month's Turning Table. "It was a new experience, and I enjoyed it very much."

Turning Tables may be a novel concept for Mumbai, but it combines elements that are tried and tested -- dinner at home, good food, lots of wine and interesting new company.

Come on in, pull up a chair: here, you’ll always be amongst friends. Especially those who know to keep their crackberrys off the table so there's more room for food!

For Turning Tables III, Chef Ashutosh Nerlekar of Olio at hotel Novotel Mumbai takes the helm. That means delish Mediterranean fare whipped up from scratch in a Brown Paper Bag subscriber’s kitchen. When: March 7 at 8.30pm, Rs 500 a head. To grab a chair email guide@bpbweekend.com, limited seats. For regular updates on Turning Tables, check in at www.bpbweekend.com.