By Lisa Futterman

It’s 7 p.m.New Year’s Eve in a South Loop loft and a well-dressed waiter is pouring sparkling wine for 20 well-dressed guests. A black-clad chef passes hors d’oeuvres, a “sandwich on a stick,” announcing “Please eat it in one bite” as the tray empties. The diners are invited to sit at the long, decorated table as the waiter distributes the wine bottles to their proper owners. The chef delivers goblets of live shrimp ceviche and a short speech about what the guests can expect fromthe $90X-marx NewYear’s Junket they have signed on for. “Keep yourmind open!” cries the chef.

Chef Zack (who asked to remain anonymous to add to themystery; his and all other names in this section have been changed) has a simple mission for his year old underground dining project. “We produce high quality restaurant style food in a non- restaurant atmosphere. Food is first, and we present the food as the art and as the entertainment.” He calls it “social gastronomy,” and started out having donation dinner parties on the floor of his tinyWrigleyville bachelor apartment.WithMary Ann, his girlfriend and sous chef, he searched for the perfect space to nurture his desire to present his food hisway. “People are always wowed, and always happy,” says Zack, “especially sincewe’ve gotten chairs.”Their loft is essentially “a kitchen with a giant room in front of it,” but a typical home kitchen it is not. Equipped with an immersion circulator, liquid nitrogen tanks, and stainless work tables, the room reveals Zack’s professional training and experience, as does the menu, an amalgam of tightly worded ethnic elegance and molecular wonders.His deep-fried “Mashed Potato Truffle” implodes to reveal amolten cheese center, and “24K” is actually golden carrot soup, with 24 tiny carrot variations.

Appropriate to their underground nature, the X-marx team relies on suspense, secrets, and surprise to tease and please their guests, many of whom return month after month as offerings change with the season. Diners receive a secret password with their reservation confirmation, plus mysterious and lengthy directions (including a ride
in a clanky old time elevator) to obtain entry to the venue. Zack throws frequent curveballs with the menu, adding extra courses (like the surprise New Year’s ceviche) on a whim.

In presenting themost elaborate and perhapsmost elite of the events I attended, X-marx has helped create a new type of intimate community dining experience.

Thirty-five diverse guests showed up at a Bucktown gallery space toting bottles of wine for the ClandestinoHarvestDinner party, a five-course pear-inspiredmeal cooked right in front of us, along with live bluegrass music from the local acoustic combo Tangleweed. We feasted on spaghetti squash empanadas, corn chowder with purple heirloom
tomatillos, and pear-stuffedDuroc pork loin. The mystery location was revealed only 24 hours ahead of time, sent along with a laundry list of local ingredients we would be eating. At dinner, the chef proudly presented each course by telling a story of how the products were sourced. It was an experience that overshot my expectations.

Clandestino founder EfrainCuevas got into cooking during his college days at the University of Illinois, where he was studying civil engineering. He hosted dinner parties and refused to eat “the (bad food) my friends ate.” Upon moving to Berkeley, California, he met Ghetto Gourmet (a pioneer underground dining club) founders Joe and Jeremy
Townsend and caught the food bug. “I went to every single event and used my vacation days to help with dinners. I decided I wanted a career in food.”

After coming to Chicago and talking to caterers and chefs, Cuevas officially launched Clandestino in June 2008. On the record, it is a personal chef business, complete with a catering liability policy and sanitation certificate. “Our events are a collective group of clients in a private space, hosted by whatever gallery owner, apartment dweller, or restaurateur chooses to.” Handling the issue of the legality of these events presented a “huge learning curve,” but when Cuevas connected with an accountant who had experience assisting the tamale and taco stand guys through the tangle of City Hall bureaucracy, he finally got the answers he needed.He then set out to find his audience, intentionally setting up his website tomake it difficult for just anyone to sign up, and relying more on word of mouth marketing from happy diners.

Chicago Acupuncturist Mark Reese and his partner, Yaron McNabb, were my tablemates at the ClandestinoHarvest dinner. They told of their first experience in underground dining, in Pilsen, in the back room of a barbecue place that Cuevas often chooses as a venue. “We thoughtwewere at the wrong place,” said Reese, “the door was very
foreboding. Often you sit with people you don’t know, and kind of have blinders on for the first ten minutes. But once the wine starts to flow, people begin to light up.” According to Reese, a frequent visitor to Chicago’s hippest, newest restaurants, “Clandestino’s food is an eight, but the clandestine aspect makes it an eleven. As a whole package, it is a rich experience and totally worth going.”

The key, saysCuevas, is “that the clients have an understanding that what we are doing is experimental, and not to have trendy expectations.” While enthusiastic about food, Cuevas ismore focused on community culinary education and hopes to set the company up as a non-profit to keep the event price down and enhance accessibility.

Of the three I experienced, Sunday Dinner’s club events feel the most like an intimate dinner party, at the home, perhaps, of your neighbor, the chef.

Christine Cikowski and Josh Kulp are passionate chefs who met in culinary school and, according to Cikowski, “formed a bond over their food styles.” A New York Times
article on secret dining piqued their interest and in September 2005, (with former partner Jason Stern who left the business last year), they held an outdoor five course dinner for 18 in the courtyard of her apartment building without previously having ever cooked a large scale dinner together.

As more of the monthly dinners came to pass, the chefs incorporated their catering company and watched as their secret dinners became aboutmore than just the delicious, skillfully prepared food. “We realized it was more of a community experience,” says Cikowski. “The food became a catalyst for meeting people and connecting in someone’s home.” At these exclusive events, the chefs are able to make personal connections with their diners in ways that busy restaurant kitchens rarely allow. “Our friends in the
restaurant industry are jealous.” Cikowski adds.

Seasonality and simplicity drive themenus at the referral only dinners. “the food,” says Cikowski, “speaks for itself completely. ”Their vast array of menus has included everything from traditional Mexican tacos and churros to their annual sell-out cassoulet dinners, with a major focus on local and sustainable product. As Kulp says “We are
developing our cuisine to stand up beyond the [secret dining] context.” In addition, says Kulp, the events became “nominally profitable, although plenty were not,” and their community dining club mailing list grew to 1,000 people through word of mouth, allowing the chef-owners to quit their jobs in the kitchens of some high profile restaurants and pursue their love of cooking food for people in unusual, a typical settings.

“We are the exact opposite of elitist,” says Cikowski. “All we ask is ‘who referred you?’”

The infant alternative diningworld is expanding quickly and in many directions, with retail food shops, restaurants, and regular folks riffing on the theme of community dining. If the social gastronomy movement continues on this path—well-prepared food served in intriguing yet comfortable venues, spiced with a touch of cache—then diners have a whole new world to explore…underground.