Eric Miller, Sharon Litzky, Jennifer Levison, Richard Blais and Merrideth Zeisse got into the spirit of the Underground Supper Club
When Jenny Levison, Souper Jenny as she is known to her legions of fans, turned on her video camera and asked me to describe the evening in one word, I said, “unprecedented.”
What else can you say about a night when you ate Black Crow and Black Bass with Gruel and Tobacco, and Sacrificial Lamb with Brain Ravioli cooked by a purple rimmed-eye celebrity chef, with the aid of a cotton candy machine, a smoker and a legion of black-clad, black-lipsticked waitstaff?
And oh yeah, we were dining outside. In 40 degree weather. In a cemetery.
It was all part of the multi-talented Jenny’s Underground Supper Club. It works like this – you sign up for the event and explain why you’d make a good supper club guest. Once accepted, you know only the date and that you’ll be enjoying a five-course meal cooked by one of Atlanta’s top chefs. A few days before the event you get an email with location and the chef’s name.
We knew that the event would be October 17 and we got an email a few days before that we would be in historic Oakland Cemetery. Seems the Supper Club wouldn’t be the only thing underground. We’d be surrounded by 6,000 “residents” as they call them. Our food was to be prepared by Richard Blais, the nationally acclaimed chef who is also revered for his appearances on “Top Chef: Chicago,” ‘Top Chef Masters,” “Iron Chef America” and “Food Detectives.”
We were to dress warmly in all black and bring a flashlight to find our way in the dark. I giggled when I read Jenny’s invitation, written as a poem, and anticipated the event like a little kid looking forward to Halloween – I knew plenty of treats were in store for us.
The entire evening was enchanting, another way I could have described it in one word. From
The black-clad guests at Oakland Cemetery.
the first moment we arrived at the Visitors Center after a stroll through this beautiful cemetery that dates back to 1850 and were greeted with a glass of champagne, everyone was in high spirits. Come on, I have to use a few puns when describing dinner in a cemetery, right?
After champagne and yummy fried okra bites, we all sat down to view our menu, written on black paper with silver pen, and stuck inside a blood-shot spooky “eyeball.” I lost possession of mine at some point in the evening when celeb hairstylist Richie Arpino grabbed it to make a pair to stick in his own eyeballs. It was that kind of evening.
The Rotten Corn Soup was garnished with a spider web (thus, the cotton candy machine) and Chef Richard debuted his new smoking unit to add flavor to the Black Crow (pigeon) to simulate one of the things that pigeons eat – cigar butts.
As we enjoyed course after course, each accompanied by delicious wines from Murphy’s and served by Murphy’s wine guy Nick Salpekar , the sun set over the Atlanta skyline. The occasional wind blast just added to the atmosphere of the evening.
Check out Jenny’s Underground Supper Club. It’s the best club you’ll ever join. Oh and for a real behind-the-scenes in the kitchen look at the dinner, check out the video, which ends charmingly with Jenny tucked into bed.
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