Do I sound like an ingrate? When you live in New York, it's easy to get bored with restaurants. Or at least I do. Food gets boiled into concepts. Chefs are blended into restaurateurs who blend into interior decorators. Sometimes I feel like I'm a (willing) participant in a game of $28-a-main-dish roulette.
That's where underground dinners come in. The name sounds a bit obnoxious. They aren't underground in the sense that PDT or Milk & Honey are underground -- widely publicized and elitist. No, underground suppers are low-key, generated by word-of-mouth, and democratic.
Last Sunday, I spent the evening with Mike Lee of Studiofeast, Brian Quinn and Johnny Cigar of The Noble Rot, and Daniel Sklaar and Georgie of Fine & Raw, as well as so many other fascinating people. If you want some sort of pat on the back that you're in the know, you might get it. But that's only part of it. The shallow part. This was a night for trying new things, meeting new friends, and carving out a new experience beyond the NYC restaurant churn.