First of all, better now than never!

It took me a while to write this down (it was due for January – Fabio’s still kicking my lazy ass) but i got taken by too many other things, like trying loads of food in South East Asia for example.

Anyways, here we are finally!

Let us start this post saying congrats to Chiara and Francesco for their just arrived new flatmate/daughter Ada!

Do you remember them from our previous post? They really wanted her and in the end she came to the world. A nice bundle of joy and nappies to change but, mostly and hopefully, a future guest soon 😀

Since we are talking about babies we should mention our first baby customer and their lovely parents.

When we started our food journey in the supperclub world, a big wave of new faces just started popping up from everywhere in a few months. Whatever it was that we were doing, let’s be clear: by the time that we started we never attended a supperclub or knew what it was a supperclub like.

I remember myself browsing the Mrs. Marmite’s Lover “Supperclub bible” Fabio bought me and just thinking: you know what? We should just do what we feel like doing.

Amongst all the things we did in the beginning, one was joining an alternative online platform which could give voice to our totally unknown project. This is how we joined this website which had just started being online and looked like tailor made for supperclub freshers as we were. This website is Edible Experiences. We’ve been flirting, chatting over emails with Wen until the day she, and his husband and partner in crime, Amir plus the newly arrived Zafr, came over to our Sicilian supperclub.

Since that day meeting up hasn’t just been a supperclub question but it mostly turned into a matter of friendship and reciprocal support (aka “getting into trouble together”) in bringing the idea that some dreams can come true if you strongly believe and can cope with the feeling of being constantly out of pocket for your crazy idealism.

We like to think that we grew up together along with EE as our friendship did and it’s still good to dream together wating for the day we will look at each other and say: “I knew you were right!”. More adventures to come, more food to eat, more seats to be filled, one at a time.

A few supperclubs after our Sicilian one, this boy up above came around: Luis. He actually came over when my parents went to London for my graduation day but to me graduation was more getting their consents on what i was cooking far away from the Academia.

Luis liked so much the atmosphere that, i promised he hasn’t been forced, decided to join the team

and took over Assunta’s role as she was going back to Italy. We spent with Luis a few increbibly funny months of food, wine and laughs and whenever i think of happy times a smile goes to that period of my life with all of us together. Now Luis is finding his luck in Munich and we wish all the best as we’re pretty sure he’ll get what he wants.

Talking about collaboration we cannot keep out of the loop our wine girl, Colleen.

When, almost one year ago, Colleen joined our guests for our Spanish tapas night it was already love at first sight.

The common passion for great food and fine wines, made us decide what was in my mind for ages: having easy going, supperclub friendly but still informative wine tasting sessions matched to incredible regional dishes. Colleen aka “Our Natural Wine Girl” with its beautiful portfolio of natural wines coming from Maltby Street popular wine merchant Aubert&Mascoli, started thrilling all our guests with her sparkling and roaring persona, her shy spoken Italian and, most of all, her captivating, loud and inspiring passion for wines, small producers and everything that happens from  the terroir to the moment a bottle is poured into a glass.

Half woman and half tannins and tasting notes, our adventures together included regional wine tastings, best-selling sparkling wine events, “work dinners”, snowball fights and, of course, a few hangovers on the way to success.

Colleen, we love you! (and we love Ian too!!!)

In the final acknowledgements i can’t forget our most beloved guests that eventually became friends: Andrew and Katie who always supported us (and nicknamed me Gregory as Beat poet Gregory Corso for my “meditative glances” during the dinners) and to whom i still have to give back a book, Simone (pictured above) who has been one of our most passionate followers and joined the team for one night, John Man who is always in my heart and once brought us fresh bread (which is to me same as bringing flowers to a woman), Lyn who joined us in incredible food adventures and recently dragged me around in Kuala Lumpur and Shu and Leigh (pictured below), always funny and honest guests with their lovely company and punctual comments that helped us a lot alonf the way.

A special final mention goes to the biggest ever assembled BDK team for the Covent Garden Sunday Feasts series at School of Wok. From the amazing FoH girls to the super committed kitchen support a big hug to Selina from Yummychooeats, Teresa and Ana from Flavours of Spain, Wen (again!), Elena and Stefano aka “the Shark” (pictured). With the booking going very slow for the first time ever and the lack of Fabio’s support on the night, it all started with the worst possible auspices in the weeks just before the event. You guys turned all this into gold and made out of that night a perfect (fully booked), fun occasion to cook and eat with friends!

I’ll always remember my pop up adventure in Covent Garden as one of the best and most successful BackDoor experiences i’ve ever offered to my guests.

Not to mention Elena’s beautiful Amaretto sour!