Sunday, September 03, 2006

If this is your hood we'd love you to come for dinner

My mates & I who live in the local area get together for regular "hood dinners" meeting up for a good feed & a bottle of red. Usually we'd take over someone's house for the occasion.

My background is hospitality so I would usually end up in the kitchen, others would bring dessert or something to start with. Everybody brings wine & even then there's never enough...and Table for 20 works in pretty much the same way. My mates are in the kitchen cooking, friends drop round with bits & pieces and my mum is a fantastic Italian cook so I'm still partial to serving a bit of her home made Tiramisu on occasion.

It started getting out of hand when the neighbourhood dinner table moved beyond 10 people and so we started Table for 20 to keep the tradition going .. but now we're feeding up to 40 people on some nights.

There's a core group of us who started bringing mates along and those mates brought other mates and before we knew it we had people who sort of knew eachother or were loosely connected in some way eating together regularly. We liked the idea of having a regular meal & bottle of wine with friends but also the chance to meet new people who live locally as well...

Everyone who comes to Table for 20 is usually introduced by someone whose already been here, so people come because they like the idea of hood dinners and for some reason it seems to work.

Anyone who lives in Sydney will agree there's no shortage of good restaurants here but the one thing we thought the 2010 area was really lacking was somewhere low key where you can just come & have a feed, open a bottle of wine, meet a few new people and have a laugh. I think sometimes people get so caught up in their day to day lives and we all tend to get pretty isolated and just stick to our immediate groups that we have time for.

My friends say coming to Table for 20 is kinda like coming to my place for dinner except that the dinner party seems to keep getting bigger and you never know who you're going to meet...I like the idea of that.

11 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Sounds lovely! Well done.

11:10 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'll be making a booking one evening!

11:31 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

me too, sounds really cool.

3:56 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i've been a few times and it's cool, really different to the usual sydney scene which is kinda nice

8:35 PM  
Blogger Julia said...

I'm a 2010 resident, same street even, and just walked past and this really caught my eye. Can't wait to dine with you guys!

1:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

i've only been once but already im excited about going again this coming week. Lovely food, engaging conversation (we developed a plan for a new political party even, the anti-vote party - ok it needs work) and beautiful decore with some cool street stencil art on the walls. my kind of place!

2:51 AM  
Blogger Thien Lan said...

just love the concept, so different and innovative, great for Neos with an underground vibe without compromising on the quality of the food (or so I heard).
Will come in the new year to check if it's a myth or a must.

11:09 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

hey michael
your concept is amazing and i really do feel like im at your place having an AWESOME dinner! highly recommended :)and to everyone whose reading, Michael is an exceptional host so come down and grab a feed x

1:58 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

aMichael, You are truely a generous (and perhpas genius)gem. Your open heart and random acts of kindness inspired myself and three friends last night. We're coming back. Thank you. And you're a "spunk".

1:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I and my friends had a brilliant night and enjoyed making friends with lots of new people. Such a unique idea and the fab food, service and music made it such an enjoyable night. Have been raving about it since x

12:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

A truly remarkable experience!
Besides the amazing food, the atmosphere is incredibly warm, open and homely (yet still cool and original!)

HIGHLY recommended.

Claire

7:09 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home