Finding the Right People

Getting people who mesh well together is always a challenge. One benefit of supper clubs is coming across all kinds of people. The good news is that you get to meet people. The bad news is that the chances of them being a great fit are pretty slim. One of the beauties of my supper club experience is that my wife and I have used the more formal supper club, where there are a lot of people, to find the smaller group that we really wanted to be friends with. In the end, dealing with a few jerks can be worth it if you get to know some very interesting people.

The solutions on how to find people to participate in a supper club are broad ranging:

• Neighborhood groups. This is one of the easiest ways to find people and conveniently located. The Classic Supper Club model is based on our neighborhood. We have a neighborhood association that publishes a newsletter. There is a section that advertises participation in the supper club. I have actually heard of people that bought a house in our neighborhood because they knew about the supper club.

•Internet groups. One site you could use to get started getting together with people over food isgrubwithus.com. People get connected through the site, usually at a local restaurant.

• Colleagues. We all spend quite a bit of time with the people we work with. The subject of socializing over a meal is very easy to interject. When I lived in Delaware, I traveled with a guy I worked with. We would dine together on a Wednesday night, and the subject of my supper club would come up. It didn't take long for him to want to be part of the Saturday night supper club, where I would try to replicate the dishes we shared at a restaurant the previous Wednesday.

• Church groups.

• School groups.

• Facebook friends.

The supper clubs I have been involved with have led to real friendships. We have formed clubs from the wide array of sources listed above and have learned there is no one right way to find the right people. Trial and error is the only way. Going through a few bad experiences makes you appreciate the good ones.

Finding the right people has some real benefits. While most of us know a thing or two about wine, it is great to have a wine and beer experts in the group.

My friend Scott is the perfect example. He is excellent at paring the right wine with the menu. Scott, like many wine "experts," has an excellent wine collection and is great at offering up a few (or 10) delicious bottles from his cellar. Scott was such a good customer of the local wine store affectionately named "Germantown Baptist Wine and Liquor" by Scott's wife, Kathy, that when he moved, the wine store flew their flag at half-mast for weeks.

In my neighborhood, we are also blessed to have a "beer guy" as well. Tom Schoelkopf worked for Anheuser-Busch and is a great guy to have at a party. You can count on him to bring a good selection of Budweiser's classic product as well as some newer products they are developing. For many of our supper club events, people are asked to bring an appetizer. Tom is famous for asking, "Do you want me to cook, or should I just bring beer?" Somehow, the answers are pretty consistent.

It can be difficult to find the right people for a supper club. A good thing about being part of a larger group is that you get to meet a lot of people. Some you will like, and others, not so much.

One of my pet peeves is people using cell phones to make calls in the middle of a dinner party. I have to state up front that I, like many of us, am addicted to my cell phone. While I am not the nerdiest of nerds, in my circle of baby boomer friends, I am definitely up there as far as being technologically adept. If you really want to be bored, I can take you through the app I have developed to calculate golf bets. With this said, I also believe you have to draw the line.

There have been times where a guest has made a call from the table at a supper club dinner. One guy made multiple calls to his daughter while she was on a date. I guess he wanted us to know that his daughter was dating the starring baseball player from the local high school. (Ten years later, the pitcher has signed a $127 million dollar contract. He didn't marry the daughter.) For the next supper club, I wrote a menu and put a notice stating, "Please refrain from making cell phone calls from the dinner table" on it. I am not quite sure if it was because of the notice, but the offender dropped out of the club. Virtually the same scenario has happened more than once over the last 15 years.

With the above said, the rules on the use of cell phones at the dinner table are changing. My wife simply hates it. I find myself using it occasionally. Many millennials have phones as extended appendages. The key with a supper club is to establish ground rules that members can agree on or at least respect.

Set a Direction for the Club

Setting ground rules has been a topic of discussion in more than a few clubs I have been involved with. While there are all types of clubs from formal to very informal, it makes sense to have clear delineation of:

• Roles and responsibilities

• The degree of culinary complexity

• How often you meet

• Who pays for what

• The use of cell phones at the dinner table and other agreed-upon etiquette

Different types of clubs will require different levels of structure. There is no correct answer for all, and I have seen the level of structure change dramatically over time for different clubs. Like anything else, it has to do with people's personalities and preferences.

One of the key concepts behind a successful supper club is member participation. That means that the host has to give up complete control. My wife will tell you that I am a control freak when it comes to food. When giving up control, there is a certain level of danger and a risk to quality. We once had a dinner where I farmed out the salad. I thought it was a simple salad. What is simple for one can be a challenge for another. Our guest decided to mix the salad with the dressing hours before the dinner. By the time it came to serve it, the lettuce was a rancid looking off-color. Not wanting to risk the health of the other guests or hurt the feelings of the challenged salad maker, I tried to rescue the non-lettuce portions of the salad and whipped up a new salad with fresh lettuce and dressing.

The moral of this story is that it is best to try to correlate the complexity of the item being farmed out with the culinary skill level of the contributor. Beyond that, you have to be flexible.

Mise en Place

Preparation is a simple concept. If you can get things ready in advance, it takes the pressure off when you have to pull the meal together. The beauty of preparation is that it increases your chances of success and reduces stress. Having the work done in advance allows you to enjoy...