Dining and chatting: Supper clubs offer an opportunity to get to know the culinary secrets of the host and get acquainted with the other guests.

Germany is awash with secret “supper clubs” hosted by amateur chefs and thriving on the allure of the forbidden – By Anne Hansen

No names can be mentioned. The chef does not want to see her surname printed in the article, the guests prefer to remain anonymous and even the street where it’s all taking place must not appear in this newspaper. The hippest gastronomic trend to sweep across Germany must remain swathed in anonymity.

Berlin on a Friday evening in May. Caroline, the woman without a surname, has invited 18 guests to her apartment. She has never seen these people before, knows nothing about them and yet she will entertain them at her own dining table as though they were close friends. Once a month, the 33-year-old with a day job in accountancy hosts the Thyme Supperclub. The idea came to her when she moved from London to Berlin two years ago, with no friends in the city. The supper club was the best way to get to know new people in a relaxed atmosphere. Caroline has always been an enthusiastic cook. Nowadays the supper club is often booked out months in advance and is regarded as one of the capital’s culinary highlights.

Gatherings such as this, where total strangers meet to tuck into a multi-course menu while chatting about all and sundry are not only taking place in Berlin on this particular evening. Supper clubs are springing up in every large town and city in Germany. It is now de rigueur to have visited a secret restaurant of this kind. Guests whisper details of the evening to their work colleagues the next day, surreptitiously scrawling telephone numbers on scraps of paper for anyone wanting to put their name down for a secret dinner. Advertising is almost exclusively through word of mouth. Even the British newspaper, The Guardian, recently ran a major feature on the 10 best supper clubs in Berlin.

At first glance, this is all rather surprising. After all, supper clubs are emerging in an era when Germany is well and truly enamored with gourmet restaurants. After France, Germany has the most starred restaurants in Europe. New gourmet temples open in a blaze of publicity, and all the top chefs have their spot on national television. But there is something quite different that the nation apparently wants. A series of surprise courses instead of fixed menus, living room ambience instead of slick restaurants, a jumble of quirky plates and cutlery instead of wine glasses polished up like mirrors.

It is the secret, the private, the unconventional and probably also the forbidden elements of this type of dining experience that draw Germans to these clandestine restaurants. After all, supper clubs are only semi-legal. Strictly speaking, hosts must pay tax on monies earned during the evening, obtain a license if they are serving wine and as soon as any music is played in the background, pay royalties to GEMA, the German Society for Musical Performance and Mechanical Reproduction Rights. In practice, it’s rare for any of these conditions to be met. Supper clubs thrive on the allure of the forbidden. And the fact that strangers can become friends for the night – and perhaps for longer.

The guests in Caroline’s living room tonight include a personnel consultant, two journalists, an English teacher and a businessman who works primarily in Singapore. Some come in pairs, many come alone. What they all share is an enthusiasm for good food and an openness for new encounters. When the canapés arrive, everyone is still talking about the weather; by the time the ajo blanco and asparagus-rosemary lasagne is being served, hobbies are the topic of conversation; when the roasted monkfish comes, your neighbor is describing the woman of his dreams; and once the cranachan – a Scottish dessert – is served up it is as though everyone has known each other for years. Telephone numbers are exchanged as the chocolate truffles are passed around.

Caroline’s supper club features perpetually changing menus reflecting all manner of cuisines. Other clubs only serve vegetarian food, while some are exclusively devoted to Asian specialties. There are also huge variations when it comes to pricing policy. Some charge a fixed price for dinner and wine; at others guests can decide how much they would like to pay at the end of the evening. Caroline recommends a donation of €40 ($50) for the Thyme Supperclub menu. She says takings just about cover the cost of preparing the seven-course dinner. Not that this is about getting rich, she adds. All she wants to do is cook good food for nice people. As simple as that.