Restaurant Review: Trail Of Our Bread supper club in Dalston

It is a relief when you can be concise; our night at Trail Of Our Bread (TOOB) last Saturday will be one of the best nights I have this year.  If you like food and know how to get to London Fields without a map go here and beg for a place as you won't regret it.

I can think of no supper club (bar The Pale Blue Door but then it did have Rusella the drag queen - review here) where I have had so much raw fun.  This was only the TOOB's third supper club, it cost a mere £20 but it was blow you away good.  This was not about money, rep or anything else, it was about a passion for food.  And it showed.

We committed guest sacrilege by turning up early as the rain forced us into a cab.  There can be nothing worse than guests turning up early when you are having that final panic before everyone arrives but there we were, sober and judgmental.  This didn't phase TOOB at all and I was allowed to assist with the stereo system and Jen was allowed to assist by drinking white wine.  This gave us all the more time to appreciate the decoration.  Their flat is the kind of thing "Friends" would be set in nowadays if it was called "Hipsters" and was set in Dalston.*  Industrial relaxed cool warehouse chic.  And then it had been attacked by a briliant set designer with a sense of fun.  Jelly fish dripped from the ceiling with lights blinking at us.  A painted mermaid stared out us from the edge of the room.  Toy fish nestled on our plates.  Passion and effort were embedded and baked into the flat.

Restaurant Review: Christmas at Number 42 by the Pale Blue Door/ Architecture Foundation

I was nervous before I went here. Was it going to be about the food or about a drag queen serving you food?

The underground restaurant 'scene' in London is about many things, one thing I have unfortunately realised five or six 'supper clubs' in is that good food is not always guaranteed.

The first supper club I went to (Ms Marmite's Underground Restaurant) made me question what all the fuss was about due to the lacklustre cooking. Having read that it was inspired by the paladares in Cuba I probably shouldn't have been surprised as having eaten my way around Cuba 12 years ago I had learnt the hard way that paladares/ underground restaurants can offer disappointment and food poisoning (often together).

It was only the novel experience of mingling with strangers and the slightly illicit sensation that led me to try my second (Lady Gray's tea room). Her great baking spurred me onwards and upwards to try Fernandez and Leluu's brilliant Vietnamese extravaganza. Thereafter there was the slight commerciality of the Savoy Truffle Club (insofar as they run a tight ship which means you get acceptable food but a slightly astringent experience compared to the frivolity of the other supper clubs I have been to) and then well... Christmas at Number 42 done by those behind the Pale Blue Door in Hackney. Oh, and I nearly forgot, Nuno Mendes at the Loft is also meant to be part of this trend but there is something different about a professional chef cooking at home (however, it was hella good).

I hadn't ever been to the Pale Blue Door but I knew it was a set designer's/ drag queen's mash up of a meal. When I saw that they were collaborating with the Architecture Foundation I booked three tickets to go, one of which was for Clair who first lured me to Ms Marmite's earlier in the year and put the whole 'supper club' scene on my radar.

Beyond that I walked into Christmas at Number 42 ignorant and not having listened to Christina Aguilera for an age. That was about to change. The room was a revelation. Normally when people talk about 'rooms' they blather on about decor or some nice wallpaper. This was a pre assembled miniature house. We wiggled our way up to our table, on the second floor, into the kid's bedroom. As we went pass our drag queen for the night (Russella, see http://www.russella.co.uk), resplendent in red, informed us that there was porn under the table (superglued we found out). So far so normal.