About

Welcome to funtasty adventures! The idea of this website is to take anyone interested on a discovery tour to the culinary underground: Find secret supper clubs, underground restaurants, guerrilla dinners, pop-up bakeries…all kinds of privately organized culinary experiences that have one thing in common: People who don’t know each other come together at a secret place to share great food – and a good time. It’s a small but colorful parallel world to the established restaurant scene, but still widely unknown outside some few geographic hotspots. Fascinated by this vibrant movement myself, I thought others might be as well. So I will share my findings here. And if you are up for adventures where fun and taste come together, feel free to come around every now and then.

Talking about myself, I cannot say that I have always been interested as much in cooking as in eating and trying new tastes. Apparently, already in my very early childhood I was open to anything one would stick into my mouth, including snails in garlic butter. At least that’s what my parents say. Doesn’t mean I wasn’t picky. Asparagus for example I didn’t like as a whole. I was after the tips only, the most tasteful and tender part, which would regularly leave my poor father with a bunch of headless shoots on his plate.

My love for cooking wasn’t love at first sight. During my teenage years I was actually a very happy resident at “Hotel Mom” with zero motivation to enter into competition with my mother, or even learn from her. That only came when I moved out for my studies and didn’t want to live on frozen pizza. I had a boyfriend in the UK from Indian origin with a Chinese stepfather. He (the boyfriend, not the stepfather) made me open my heart not only to him but also to Asian food. Later on back in Germany, many of my fellow students had a (not always heated) can of ravioli for dinner, or went on a crisps and tomato diet for weeks, whilst I happily walked to the local market for buying my vegetables. One cannot study on an empty stomach: Cooking was my perfect escape from books and lectures. It added some special flavor to my days.

I also started producing my own jam. But my most productive season used to be the Christmas period: One year I shared my bedroom with piles of cookie jars, the next year I went through weeks of experimenting with all kinds of filled chocolates. Always producing large quantities, I became the preferred supplier of friends and family. Of course, feeding them resulted in growing expectations for the following year, my in-built excuse from studies for the future. No worries, I had my diploma in the end, and it wasn’t from culinary arts school but in business management.

With that in my pocket I entered work life in the music industry. Good food has always remained important to me, not at all an easy task to complete between meetings and conference calls or on business travel. “Lunch is for losers” is clearly the most idiot comment I have ever heard in an office. I can’t run a full day on a curly sandwich and a chocolate bar, physically impossible. I go as far as judging a company’s respect for its employees also by the lunch facilities made available. And I am the happiest person since a doctor told me I should have snacks in between meals.

How did I get into supper clubs and underground restaurants? Honestly, I cannot remember. It was probably a rather accidental mouse click or a magazine article, followed by immediate fascination and more research on the web, on blog sites and on Facebook. I started to talk to friends about my findings and realized most didn’t know that such things exist. But pretty much all were excited about the idea, they just didn’t know any places. From experience I can say that some supper clubs are relatively easy to find. That’s the top of the iceberg, usually resulting from a review that one journalist has put together. Once 15 other magazines have copied the original article with pride, these places get a top position in Google’s search results. However, the larger majority of underground restaurants are by nature well kept secrets.

For a short while I thought about starting my own supper club project. But I finally put that plan on hold and instead decided to share my findings with anyone interested. I will initially focus on Germany. This is where I live and where information is rather hard to find since the culinary underground is still quite young. But in principle, there are no geographic boundaries. And no matter where I discover something interesting or a lively underground restaurant scene, I will write about it.

Your feedback and suggestions will always be welcome (English or German, both equally fine). So feel free to get in touch or send me your comments on specific articles. And if you visit or hear about an underground restaurant, supper club, pop-up restaurant or anything similar, no matter where: Please drop me a line!