Good food, good company, good wines and good cocktails. Celebrity chef Maria Elia’s Supper Club at the Turambe Shoppe in Kacyiru Friday night was a welcome departure from the usual restaurant/dining experience.

A few months ago, while in Rwanda for a catering event, the London-based celebrity chef met Molly Parker, the owner of Turambe Shoppe. Maria was looking for quality catering space from which to operate, and Molly had just that at Turambe Shoppe.

A friendship soon blossomed from this initial meeting. The two soon discovered that they shared a mutual philosophy on what eating out should be all about.

"About a month ago she came back to me and asked if I would want to do a supper club and I couldn’t say no because I’ve tasted Maria’s food before and it’s phenomenal. I just knew that if we did a supper club it would be a fun event with fun people,” Molly revealed.

By 6:30 pm, guests had already started trickling into Turambe Shoppe, which sits right next to the main entrance to the Kigali Public Library in Kacyiru.

With a fee of Rwf 25,000 per head, the Supper Club understandably drew a largely expatriate crowd. Staffers at the nearby American embassy, who are regulars at Turambe Shoppe also turned up.

For that fee, diners would savor a fanciful three course family style feasting menu combining influences from Maria’s Greek heritage, inspired by the freshest seasonal ingredients from Rwanda.

The Turambe Shoppe is a small café, so management limited attendance to only 27 guests, all of who had made advance bookings.

Chef Maria’s menu was pre set, meaning that diners knew exactly what they would be eating and drinking;

During the first course, I settled for some nibbles –chilli roasted feta, matermelon, pine nuts, and some seeded bread which paired well with olive oil.

Guests sat out in small intimate groups in the dining hall, while the largest group took out the more cozy outside terrace.

A look at the activity on other tables quickly confirmed to me the true essence of the Supper Club dining concept; getting people together to share quality food, drink and company.

The food was served family style, in big bowls that diners kept passing around the table, creating the perfect family-style dinner setting.

The food was aplenty; with dishes ranging from fillet beef ragout, soft parmesan polenta, green beans and mushrooms, to spice roasted butternut squash, broccoli, caper, chilli, anchovy, basil dressing, and virunga stout chocolate sauce.

"Everywhere I go in Rwanda I see the most amazing produce, and yet when I think of Rwandan cuisine it is very delicious, but I think it can be a little bit more adventurous. I’m taking Rwandan ingredients on a flavor journey,” explained Maria, who flew back to London the following day.

"The ingredients and the meat here is fantastic and I like to experiment with it, and how do I experiment without an audience?”

It was the second Supper Club she was hosting in Kigali and at the same venue. Each supper club comes with a customized menu, with the first one having been mostly vegetarian-leaning.

Following the success of the first and second events, Maria and Molly already have plans in place for the third.

"My next Supper Club Molly has asked me to do Greek because I’m half Greek and I also love Asian, so we have two more flavors to do, Greek, then Asian.”

"You will definitely see Maria here again, hopefully over and over and over again,” an excited Molly Parker revealed after the dinner.

"There’s something so special about having people together at their table, both those you know and those you don’t know so I couldn’t miss that opportunity to have it at Turambe Shoppe. In the UK Supper Club is very popular now because it also gives you the chance to meet really interesting people that have a mutual love for good food, good company, good wines, good cocktails.”

Maria revealed that being a chef for her is not just about cooking delicious dishes; "being a chef is great for me because I get to teach other people and the more I work here the more I teach other people, like my house help who is now my assistant chef.

A supper club is about meeting new people, having your dinner with them and sharing. Tonight there are people that only came to Kigali two weeks ago and never knew anyone but now they have friends they met at the Supper Club. It’s a nice way to network over dinner.”

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