Recap: Cellar Door’s Underground Supper Club

A group of 10 strangers find themselves in a living room, upstairs in Gary McIntire and Logan Mitchell’s Normal Heights apartment, which looks like a mixed-media art installation.

There’s a TV studio “Applause” sign. Mysterious paintings (one canvass has a vacuum cleaner and the phrase “Try Sucking Less”). A deer trophy head overlooks the family table covered in time-honored white cloth, and decorated with classic kitchen towels (doubling as napkins), good tableware, a black candelabra and fresh flowers.

As the Cellar Door underground supper club hosts cook, the guests feel each other out and share foodie commentary.

“San Diego is always behind, culinary-wise...”

“It’s getting better.”

“There’s nothing good in North County, except for the surf.”

There’s a couple that likes to ferment foods without using vinegar. A pair of scientists. A pair of brothers (one’s a pastry student). Another couple. A woman from Fallbrook who says the last good restaurant there just closed. Also a food writer.

Dressed in a chef’s coat, the burgundy-haired Logan pushes through the Japanese half curtain outside her kitchen. She cups her hands to her mouth and announces the amuse-bouche for this $40 (suggested donation) midweek, three-course meal: It’s a house-made (literally) tapenade (pine nuts; nicely sour Calabrian olives) on a Bread & Cie baguette-turned-crostini.

Next Gary explains his creation: a sugar-rimmed glass with Agora Bean & Leaf’s Organic Coconut Pu-erh black tea, Bacardi 151, brandy and house-made rosemary simple syrup blended with cream.

It gets the caffeine-cocktail job done. And when the alcohol is ratcheted up - tall Pyrex beakers of wine are delivered to each diner, the equivalent of a half bottle -- the supper club sounds like an extrovert happy hour. The neighbors seem okay with this, and it’s a Wednesday.

“You know how you can save money? Quit buying things!”

“We met at (another) supper club, Black Label Table. It’s a great way to meet interesting people.”

“For me, I want San Diego to be cooler than it is.”

“Celebrity chef isn’t the same thing as chef-chef!”

The raw Dinosaur kale with Dijon vinaigrette, Marcona almonds and Fuji apples comes with many, many feta-cheese clumps. Someone piles her goat milk offering away from the earthy, dark greens.

“When you massage your kale, and this is a completely serious question...” one half of the fermenter’s club begins his inquiry to the chef - The benefit of a not-necessarily-legal supper club is that the menu creator discusses ingredients and techniques.

For the second course, chef Logan, who worked at Zuni Café in San Francisco and maintains a non-cooking day job here, announces: “Your entrée is a seared and roasted pork tenderloin with squash, (grilled) asparagus, with honey mustard jus from the pork.”

The kuri squash, picked at Suzie’s Farm and roasted with rosemary, is a well-seasoned fave, though there is some resistance to how well done the pork is. Foodies are sometimes fine with pink meat.

Read Keli Dailey’s full story and more on utsandiego.com

Source: DiscoverSD