Underground Supper Club

I have made no secret of my love for food and the dining experience as a whole.  I think when all the elements work together – the food, the atmosphere, the location, the company – it creates an intimate experience like no other.  For example, I once shared a meal in NYC with my very dear friend CJM.  It was close to midnight.  The restaurant was small and dark.  The warm breeze blew in from the open patio doors.  He had the rustic vegetables and I had the octopus.  On the surface it would seem like just another meal but all the elements came together to create such a decadent dining experience, I’ll remember it forever.

I had the same experience again this past Wednesday.  Back in the spring I stumbled across a two sentence blurb about Tulsa’s Underground Supper Club.  Well obviously I was intrigued – how could you not be?  The premise is pretty simple – about once a month 20 diners gather together (chosen by a lottery system) and a chef prepares a meal of his choosing.  But it’s so much more than that.  It’s an experience like no other.

After entering the lottery on three previous occasions I was finally selected.  The theme for our evening would be “The Curious Chicken” and all components of the meal would feature either eggs or chicken.  To add to the illicit and secretive feel of the event, you are not informed of the location of the dinner until 24 hours before the event.  How exciting!!

Our event would be held at the Campbell Hotel (http://www.thecampbellhotel.com/).  The Campbell Hotel was originally named The Casa Loma and was built in 1927.  After many years of being in disrepair, it was completely renovated in 2011 and was featured in the Designer Showcase that same year.

My date and I arrived at the Campbell Hotel promptly at 6:00pm for the Cocktail hour.  The cocktail for the evening was The SOCIAL fizz – a nice mixture of Makers, white vermouth, bitters, solerno, and egg whites.  We mingled with the other diners for the evening and found it was a fascinating mix of ages, professions, and personalities.  While we mingled we were also offered a tour of the hotel.

Precisely at 7:00pm we were escorted to the ballroom and seated for dinner.  All guests were seated at long banquet table lit with candles; soft music playing in the background.  I found myself between a gentleman who makes his living buying and selling coins and gemstones and a man who handles wealth management.  Other diners at our table included an author, a furniture salesman, a few accountants, the chairwoman of the board of directors for a hospital, a stay-at-home mother, and a postman, just to name a few. 

The first order of business was the introduction of the chef – Marcus Vause, former executive chef of the recently closed Brasserie on Brookside.  His new venture will be the opening of SOCIAL at 7^th and Boston (in the lobby of the OG&E Building), hopefully in April of 2013.

The second order of business was to have all first-timers stand and recite the supper club pledge.  I kid you not!!  We even received a lapel pin.  I was so excited!  It was like Fight Club for Foodies.  And once the dinner service started, I felt like I was in an episode of Top Chef – the presentation, the chef describing each course, the way we all discussed the food – it was spectacular.

Our first taste of the evening was an amuse bouche (a bite-sized appetizer).  It was an empanada filled with chicken, beans, and rice and topped with a dab of guacamole.  As soon as I tasted it I knew we were in for a culinary adventure. 

First Course – Oysters & Caviar.  This wasn’t your traditional oyster.  The dish was served in an oyster shell on cubes of warm lemon gelee (chicken bouillon and lemongrass blended together).  The ‘oyster’ was actually a chicken oyster which is a small, round piece of dark meat located near the thigh.  This was topped with a touch of caviar.  When eaten in one bite it did have the taste of an oyster but not the texture.  It was amazing!  And you might as well get used to me saying “it was amazing” because I think I’ll be using that term a lot to describe the menu.  This was paired with a Riesling.

Second Course – Tortelloni.  The tortelloni was served on a piece of crisp pork belly resting in a broth of calvados consommé and pressed apples.  The tortelloni was stuffed with a nice mixture of chicken liver and gizzards (yes, yes, I know how you people feel about organ meat but deal with it!  It was awesome!).  When you would take a bite of all the elements – bacon, liver, gizzards, and apple – it was the perfect combination of flavors.  This was one of my favorite dishes and it was paired with Angeline Chardonnay.

Third Course – Breast & a Wing.  This was not what I expected.  The chicken breast was a small strip of breast plated on the curried squash, topped with crisp skin.  The textures all worked together to make a really interesting bite of food and the curried squash was to die for.  It was more of a puree and the curry brought a nice balance to the sweetness of the squash.  The wing was cut in the “lollipop” style, meaning the bone was stripped clean except for a cluster of meat at the end.  It was fried crisp and then plated on top of a dollop of pomegranate roulade.  To sum it up – it was the most elegant, delectable, buffalo wing I have ever tasted.  This course was paired with Stoller Pinot Noir.  When they cleared my plate, the only thing left was the bone.

Fourth Course – Short Rib Leg.  I will admit, by the time we got to this course, I was starting to get really full.  The short rib leg was a deboned chicken leg, split and then stuffed with brisket.  It was then served with smoked beech mushrooms, corn sponge ‘cake’, and onion marmalade.  The chicken had almost a BBQ feel to it and the mushrooms really added a special element with their smokiness.  This dish was paired with a red blend. 

Fifth Course – Orange Blossom-Chile Sorbet.  The fifth course (yes, fifth!) was a delicious palette cleanser.  It was just a dollop of this amazing orange blossom sorbet with a light chili drizzle.  The sorbet had such floral undertones; it is what I would imagine eating honeysuckle ice cream would be like.  It really was so refreshing and I probably could have eaten twice as much as I was served.

Sixth Course – Cardamom Yolk.  The banana cream was like a really rich egg custard but the way it was plated, it looked like slices of bananas (which makes perfect sense now that I type this sentence).  Each slice had a drop of cinnamon cream on top and the whole thing was sprinkled with cinnamon puffed combs.  The cinnamon puffed combs were coxcombs that had been finely diced, fried crisp and coated with cinnamon and sugar.  This was served with a steaming cup of Turkish coffee.  It was absolutely the perfect ending to a perfect meal and I don’t even drink coffee!

We were seated for dinner at 7:00pm sharp and it was 10:15pm when we finally ended the evening.  It was such a decadent, illicit, sexy evening.  The food, the wine, the people, the music, the location, the whole thing was…..well, amazing. 

After it was all said and done, it was one of those rare moments when everything comes together – the meal, the drink, the location, the company – and a meal turns into an ‘experience’.  As we were leaving, these were the words of my date: “this is by far the coolest thing I have ever done in my adult life”.  I think that sums up the evening perfectly.

*Normally I try to include pictures that relate to each post but this is a special case.  I don’t want to give out too much information because the more people who know about this fabulous event, the less my chances of winning the lottery the next time, but on the other hand I want to share this wonderful experience.  It’s such a quandary – share the news or keep it all secret.  Much like Fight Club, the first rule of Supper Club is don’t talk about Supper Club.  But that’s not really the case.  The host of this extraordinary event wants to spread the word about the great culinary scene in Tulsa.  Such a dilemma!