Art of Asian Dinner, Saturday, 26 August 2006

For August, I am picking a place where we can hedge our bets regarding the weather. If the weather is fine, we can sit outside with a fine view of Postdamer Platz but in case the weather is crap again, we can have a comfortable dinner inside a lovely modern contemporary restaurant.

So, the place for the August dinner is called the Modern Art of Asia, in Leipziger Platz 8, 10117 berlin. It is a pretty stylish place, has only been open for a very few months, the people there are nice and friendly, and the food there is really very good and also quite unusual. What I mean by unusual is that YOU do your own selection of the food that will be cooked for you, and I mean, your OWN selection. The way it works is that you pick up a bowl, you fill the bowl up with raw meat or fish or noodles or vegetables or all of the above and then you take it to a cook who will cook it for you! The only thing is that you have to pre-select the sauce you want to have cooked, but that's easy and you can change this for every course. So you can try various styles of food the same night. Cool, huh?

The other really good news is that it is also a eat-all-you-can event as well. So you can go back and sample as many combinations of dishes as you want for a fixed price of less than 20 Euros. And if you have a smallish appetite and know what you want, then you can just have a single main course (which you still select yourself) for less than 13 Euros. There can be lots of unusual meats there as well. When I was sampling the place, there was crocodile and ostrich available, along with lovely large fresh king prawns. The restaurant has indicated that they will also offer a little extra something for Dinner Club members on the night but at the moment, I don't know what it is myself. If you want to check out the restaurant, it is on www.maoa.de

The date for the dinner is set for the evening of Saturday, 26 August 2006, so keep that date free if you can. After dinner, some of us might waddle over to Adagio to try and work off the food. (I can almost guarantee that everyone will eat too much!)

Anyway, this is the last dinner club event for the summer of 2006, and you should all know what to do by now, so if you want to come along for an unusual summer's dining out, please drop me an email as soon as possible on chris@berlindinnerclub.com. I am thinking of perhaps 20-25 people for this event, so please do not wait too long!

See you all soon!

Chris

How it went on the night...

If someone had told me beforehand that I would be having a meal cooked in a blackberry sake sauce, I wouldn't have believed it. But I did and it was great! After a slow start due to an unexpected influx of customers, the catering staff coped pretty well, especially considering that it is Berlin's largest Asian restaurant. The range of vegetables, meats, fish and extras was quite sufficient - there was even crocodile, rabbit and kangaroo available. Plenty of us tried several sauces and I did not hear any complaints. In fact, most people said that they will definitely go back again to try the sauces that they missed! The free dessert was generous and pretty nice, with a rambutan as one of the fruits. (I used to climb rambutan trees when I was a kid, so I know them well!)

Overall, a pretty successful night in the end, and the management of the restaurant was very gracious to us all evening. The ambience was good as well, despite the large numbers of other customers, so really, it seems like a 'must-do-again' sort of venue. After the dinner, a few of us moseyed over to Billy Wilders for a drink or two before staggering back home. The pictures say it all...

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