Bread & Bubbly Supper Club : Part I

It was high time someone started a supper club. I thought it might as well be me.

I've been dreaming for a while now of getting groups together over fabulous food with the intention of learning something new and meeting someone new - someone you're probably going to like.

This is more than a group who eats together; the purpose is to learn something fresh. Each party will have a special expert in a field who will teach for a few minutes on their expertise. It could be chef talking about food, but it might be a psychologist telling us how our brains work, or an astronaut talking about constellations, or a card shark showing us some tricks. We might have brunch on a dock, or caramels in an open field at midnight. I'm open - but each one must include new faces and new ideas.

I gathered 3 women who are known for their class, taste, and ability to have a good time, and we started meeting for coffee at Le Pichet to discuss the details. This is what happened:

Bread & Bubbly Supper Club #1. We figured bread and champagne go with everything, so perhaps we should find some to make our "house favorites." The "Bread" essentially is us, the constant hostesses, and the "Bubbly" is the revolving personalities and teachers that will grace our guest lists. The sparkle, the fizz!

We desperately needed a logo, so inspired by these fabulous beverage labels:

The Non-Scotsman helped me create this:

We printed this on invitations, on the door, and onto labels to put on our chosen champagne bottle. Each of us invited 4 guests who we thought would find this kind of night interesting; people who love food and wine and opinions about it. It's fun to get like-minded souls together knowing they'll immediately love each other. And it worked!

Le Panier agreed to not only send Laura, their gracious manager, to speak to us about bread, but sent about 70 loaves of the most crusty, warm French breads we'd ever seen! Campagna, Baguettes, Brioche galore! By the end of the night she'd convinced her husband that he was missing the time of his life and he left his own gathering at his local pub and joined the gaiety.

The light poured in the condo windows that overlooked the Sound, brilliant as 27 guests gathered to eat, drink bottles of champagne (and other sparkling wines not from that region), and consume loaves of bread. Ryan Anthony, a wine genius from Canlis, selected an assortment of sparkers for us to try and we merrily tasted our way through them for hours.

We never could agree on much - the Brioche tied with the Campagne. Three champagnes pretty much tied, although I'm sure someone voted twice.

You know you've had a good night, and a lot of bread, when each guest is leaving with loaves under each arm and fresh Le Panier cookies stuffed in their pockets.