Secret dinner parties have arrived in Toronto

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Secret dinner parties with classified locations have arrived in Toronto.

As they sign up, guests are given a date, time and neighbourhood, along with a handful of hints – industrial, experimental, intimate – but the specifics of the evening aren't revealed until much later.

“Think Singapore street food meets NYC speakeasy,” an event posted for June 29 reads, inviting 20 people to take a seat.

“Once you sign up, we let the mystery sink in,” Samihan Rai, who recently co-founded Mystery Eats with Shilpa Kotamarthi, told CTV News Toronto.

“That’s all you get to know,” Rai said. “People are hungry for what’s new in the city.”

The two met at Kotamarthi’s South Indian coffee shop Madras Kaapi on College Street last September. Their first conversation ended in plans to host a dinner together at the cafe and serve North and South Indian family recipes.

That conversation evolved into hosting dinner parties open to the public, but with a twist. They would seek out intimate and under the radar spaces, invite the public to buy tickets, only giving out the address 24 hours in advance, and keeping the menu a secret until seated.

“As you would go to a friend’s house, and you don’t know what’s on the menu, that’s sort of the vibe,” Kotamarthi said.

Saffron gnocchi stuffed with brie, mezzi rigatoni tossed in kale, pumpkin seed pesto, and limoncello tiramisu (along with several other courses) graced a wooden table at the Annex’s Tiny Market for a recent Mystery Eats dinner.

The made-in-house pasta shop hosts tasting menu dinners once or twice a month for up to 12 people. But on those occasions, a menu is provided in advance.

“It was cool because typically when people come here they know what they are going to be eating so it was really liberating,” general manager Danielle Soule said.

Tiny Market owner and chef Erich Mrak said the mystery element is important, beyond just the thrill of a surprise.

“A lot of people will read reviews and ask people for their experience before going to a place,” Mrak said.

“I think it’s important to be able to surprise people opposed to reading reviews and not going to a restaurant because it has a 4.2 or 4.3 on Google, even though they offer really great food.”