VCN Ethnic Dinners go to USA

The last VCN dinner before summer break saw a reduced group of VCNers heading to a Tex-mex restaurant, after having realized that an argentinian dinner, in any of such restaurant would had been way over the dinners' usual budget.

With numbers dwindling gradually as the summer advanced (probably the heat calls more for open-air barbecue rather than indoor dinners, even if with air conditioning), it was a little group of a dozen persons that met at the T-Bone Station near Piazza Barberini in a pretty warm and damp evening.

The place, however, turned out to be pleasantly cool and arranged, in the intention of the owner at least, as an american bar with tables able to host 6 persons aligned along the wall (down the corridor, in the picture).

The menu had a wide selection of (mostly fried) appetizers, hamburgers, different cuts of meat (included the one and a half kilo "T-Bone and King cut" steak), salads, nachos, fajitas, wraps, chili and so on and so forth, all with accompanying sauces.

A pleasant surprise was the fact that, when one of our members, finding the meat he was served not up to the expectations, had left almost all of that in the dish, the waiter ran to inform himself about the problem and immediately offered a new dish, free of charge.

All in all, the dinner was a pleasant one and the food agreeable, if not exactly light (I think just the sauces served with my wraps would had covered a full dinner's quantity of calories and fat). Bill was reasonable too, which is always a good thing. Out of the dozen people present, only one was a newcomer, while the other 11 fairly represented what, over the months, has became the core of the VCN dinners.

Given the evident trend in presence, it was decided to suspend the dinners until september, when I'll organize my last dinner before leaving to Germany. For the occasion, i decided to go back from where I took over: Erithrean.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to India

(click pictures to enlarge) The 11th Ethnic Dinner took the VCN ED crew back to India, which was last visited for Vietnam, and, for the first time, saw the event co-organized by two persons: Andrea (right) who dealt with the restaurant and myself dealing with the email exchanges and information. Honestly, hadn't it been for Andrea (who, coincidentally, joined the group at the previous asian dinner), the dinner would had never taken place as I was too busy with what's going on in my office and my leave of absence' request.

The restaurant chosen was in the middle of the Monti neighborhood, not too far from my office and in one of the most downtown zones of the city. The name of the place is "Guru" and it has the misfortune to be just two door next one of the most famous (and expensive) indian restaurants of the city, the "Maharajah". The restaurant, in my opinion, comes out well in a comparison anyway. It's small, tidy (as it was noticed even by the most careful ones among the girls of our little company) and the only bad side is that the place feels hot, perhaps even due the spicy food, and the waiters didn't help by forgetting to turn on the air conditioners.

The menu was a mix of meat and vegetable dishes, spicy but, according to the most sensitive ones of the table, "just as much" (and served with a series of sauces, just in case someone wanted to enhance or dim the spiciness). The vegetarians got a couple of separate dishes just for themselves.

Unfortunately, the names of the actual plates are unknown, but we started with a green soup which was really appreciated, followed by two different kinds of vegetarian croquettes which vaguely reminded of arab felafels. The first meat came in the work of Tandoori chicken and some spicy chicken balls. Then it was the time of rice, three different kind of beef meats presented in several different sauces (one in particular of these dishes was in absolute my favourite).

The food, it must be said, was not only of good quality and excellent taste, but so abundant that much was left at the end of the dinner, as it hadn't happened since the last peruvian dinner. Some indian beer was also present on the table, but I cannot say much about that as I didn't try it.

The company was less numerous than usual, maybe due the very late announcement made (on friday) or the summer period not encouraging evenings spent within 4 walls. Fact is, we were a pretty manageable 15 people, made of 6 italians, 2 each for Canada and UK and 1 from Brazil, Egypt, USA, Philippines and the Netherlands.

At the end of the dinner, everything was almost ruined by an idiot driving a Porsche speeding in the narrow streets and bumping with his rear-view mirror against Rachelle's elbow. Nothing serious, luckily, but still...

Anyway, next stop, probably, Argentina!

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Nigeria

(Click on the pictures to see enlarged versions) The last edition of the VCN dinners marked two sort of milestones: the 10th dinner and the 1st anniversary of the dinners as a whole. And in fact, just for the chronicles:

26/05/2006: Mexican dinner (Organized by Curt Wagner)
19/10/2006: Turkish Dinner (Organized by Curt Wagner)
07/11/2006: Eritrean Dinner
28/11/2006: Thai Dinner
23/01/2007: Peruvian Dinner
20/02/2007: Greek Dinner
08/03/2007: Egyptian Dinner
22/03/2007: Vietnamese Dinner
03/04/2007: Peruvian Dinner 2
15/05/2007: Spanish Dinner
29/05/2007: Nigerian Dinner

Some things have changed over the year, pictures were taken regularly, for instance, and I tried to make the dinners more periodic, yet I hope that the spirit, the idea of meeting new people in a relaxed environment and experimenting new accents together with new dishes, still remains.

This time, to be true, what ended up to be a Nigerian dinner was originally supposed to be a Cameroonian one, but, as I found out, the restaurant, which I had discovered the September of the last year, had since been transferred and transformed.

Honestly, the dinner was not the most successful one. The dishes were oddly tasting and while I personally appreciated the Suya (spicy chicken pieces on skewers), the groundnut soup and the banga rice (rice with cream of palm nuts), some other, especially an odd looking green rice of unknown name was simply inedible with its bitter and fishy taste.


The company, on the other hand, was more mixed up and colorful then usual. A good number of "core" people was present and several new faces showed up, apparently a group of friends who decided to show up together. Table's arrangements also caused some more problems as there was no space to form a single table and, consequently, we were forced to form two. Further on, at some point I realized I had not thought of forming the vegetarian corner (quite a problem, considering Susanne is one and with our original places we would had to split) and therefore I had to re-arrange places suddenly. Finally, despite several people calling for a later beginning of the dinner, the actual choice turned out to be counter-productive as several people had to leave before the actual end of the dinner.

Eventually, 20 people did show up, with Americans for once reaching the majority together with Italians (5), followed by Brazil, Australia and France (2) and Germany, Belgium, Norway and UK with 1 each. A non perfect dinner, all in all, which forces some re-considerations about the whole formula.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Spain

(click pictures to enlarge) The 9th edition of the VCN ethnic dinner moved back to Europe, but stayed in the same language zone than the previous dinner, from Peru to Spain.

Honestly, the Spanish dinner was hastily organized and that might have had an influence on the number of people present which dropped to the maximum ever registered the previous dinner to the lowest number ever of this one, with just 16 persons (7 Italians, 2 Americans, 2 Brazilians, 1 each for France, Belgium, Japan and Norway).

However, the dinner went along nicely...and slowly, as the restaurant was probably the slowest one in serving that we have ever been so far. Yet, to some nice (and pretty italian) focaccias and some tortillas, served as appetizers, three different kind of paellas followed: the classic Valencian one, a meat and (just for one person, but abundant enough to be tried by several people) a vegetarian one, the whole thing accompanied by abundant sangria.

I must say I'm not an expert of paella, but I found all three of them pretty tasty and rich, if a bit greasy (but I suppose that's as meant). The sangria surprisingly went along pretty well (and fast!) with the food and conversation kept nice and lively, hopefully making feel the new faces (making about a quarter of the whole) feel welcomed and integrated.

The only bad point of the evening at least for me, was that the service took so long that eventually we finished right about the time of the last day-buses' and metro' run, which meant that suddenly almost everyone had to run away without having had the chance of enjoying the free coffees and limoncelloes offered by the restaurant's owner. Personally, I closed the evening escorting Yoko to the closest (and crowded, just to be on the safe side) bus station and Lucia (Yoko's friend) directly to her place, lost in Rome's suburbs... quite a trip, I must say.

The lack of our semi-official photographer (Laura, where are you!?) was heavily felt as, I do not know why, two thirds of the pictures I took came out unfocused, with only 4 surviving... my apologized to the ones who intervened and didn't show up in the pictures here.

Next time it will be Africa time again.. Cameroon? Senegal? Nigeria? We'll see...

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Peru... again

Late, late, late report, but better late than never, as we say here (and boy if that's a popular saying in Italy). As usual, you can click on the pics to get a larger version...

The 9th edition of the VCN Ethnic dinners should had seen as "host" country Brazil, yet, as it turned out,it was extremely hard to find a suitable Brazilian restaurant in town. In fact, after a whole week of search, I found out that half the restaurants that were to be found in the various lists were either out of business (one in particular, since "at least 8 years", as I got to know from their former-neighbors) or in places logistically impossible to reach, way in the suburbs or simply in area with no public transportation whatsoever.

So it was that, the day coming closer and closer and with no real alternatives, I decided to organize a second Peruvian dinner, relying on the fact that over the previous months many new faces had shown up and many hadn't been there at the first dinner.

Three factors were actually in play that could had turned the night in a nightmare: first of all, I had announced the dinner very late, just days before the day and right before a week-end when most people were likely not to have a Internet connection. Secondly, as it very often happens when it's time for our dinners, the weather was a mix of hail and heavy rain. Thirdly, I even added on it by mistaking the number of the restaurant communicating 43 rather than 44 and, obviously, it turned out that the wrong number was exactly on the other end of the street.

Then, quite surprisingly, things went precisely the opposite way: not only the turn-out was the higher ever (more than 30 people), but people just kept arriving as some of the guests called announcing they were taking someone else with them or showed up with a friend of them without any warning at all. Although I lost track of all the ones who showed up, I know we had people from Japan, Philippines, USA, Canada, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, UK, Finland, Norway, France, Brazil, obviously Italy and another couple of countries I can't recall. To make it even sweeter, we also had a canadian couple just about to get married (on the right... and married by now, congratulations Rachelle and Renè).

Being the menu exactly the same that we had successfully experimented the previous time, the satisfaction was just as complete, with lots of food left on the table and eventually taken away in the most common north-American "doggy bag" tradition. Unfortunately for the first time there was a little mix-up with the numbers, but the ones who eventually paid an extra euro to fix the bill were rewarded with free drinks (and a wide array of them, between limoncello, amaro, grappa and I can't remember what else)... the owner actually made the mistake of leaving us the bottles for us to serve ourselves, without imagining the mistake he was doing...

So, I think I can say everyone had fun, and to make it even better, the rain had gone by the time we were out of the restaurant...

Now, some weeks have passed and it's time to be back to dinners and it's Europe time now and while usually the locatons are voted upon, this time I will decide and Spain will be... Paella, Tortillas, Sangria and, who knows what else...

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Vietnam

(Click on the pics to get a larger version) It was a dark and stormy night... and it was exactly like that, it's not just the standard beginning. In fact, the day the 8th edition of the VCN ethnic dinner was set for it was also the day when not one, not two, not three, not even four but for FIVE times the sky of Rome decide to shower the city with hail, each time in a heavier way than the previous one so much that the last one, fell just a few minutes before the meeting time, left a good layer of ice over the street and cars, making it difficult to just walk straight.

In such circumstances, I was expecting a high number of defections and I would had even understood them. Quite surprisingly, in the end, almost everyone made it to the restaurant making a fairly crowded dinner with 18 people. As usual, italians made the largest group with 5 people followed by Germany and USA with 2 each, then Netherlands, Philippines, Norway, Finland, Chile Brazil, Croatia and the first Australian ever... and someone else the country was never discovered. Unfortunately, even if almost everyone showed up eventually, the weather took its toll in the form of huge delays, making the proper dinner start quite a bit late...

The restaurant itself didn't have enough place to accommodate all of us in a single table and so we were divided between a main table and two, smaller, ones. Speaking of the restaurant, located in via Giulia (right behind Campo dei Fiori), it turned out to be the only vietnamese restaurant left in Rome after the closing down of a more famous one near the British Embassy. It's pretty unassuming and barely noticeable from outside, and even inside it's nothing really impressive, made of two relatively small rooms. Putting together a standard menu was somewhat complex, in part due some communication problem with the owner and even worse with the waiters, which made problematic at first the service, but that eventually was reason of amusement more than annoyance.

Food was ok, even if not sensational, the best dish being probably, at least for my taste, the beef with onions and talks were, as usual, lively and cheerful (as you can see...). And while I was pretty much stuck against a wall and basically unable to move, fate made us discover the one who could become the official photographer for our future dinners in the person of Laura, who spent a big deal of time happily jumping around the tables to make pictures (being barely noticed while doing it, I must say, making for a couple of pretty funny pictures) and apparently immensely enjoying herself in the process.

Dinner went along smoothly and before we knew it, we arrived to the end, but apparently no one wanted to leave as we kept going with our talks and having more spare rice brought to the table as an excuse for keeping the tables (not like the owner of the place would had sent us out, anyway). But as always, things must come to an end and a few minutes before midnight we called it over, happy to discover that, in the meanwhile, the weather had improved and, despite the bitter cold (well, in italian terms, but what can you expect in a day when ice had been falling down from the sky the whole time?), we could had made it back home dry.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Egypt

The 7th Edition of the Ethnic dinners saw the VCN gang moving to Egypt (click pics to enlarge). I ended up choosing the restaurant where a former neighbor of mine had worked for a while over last summer, having only nice things to report about the owners and the cook.

Indeed, I went to check the place with Susanne and, even if small, the place looked nice and charmy, especially due the tent-like arrangement of the interiors and ceiling. Arranging the menu was easy and mostly vegetarian friendly, what was complicated was putting together the participants as, due an unnoticed bug if yahoo, my first two messages about the dinner were never delivered to the crowd. So it was that five days before the actual dinner I had still no one attending. Yet, someone finally dawned on me the problem and after I send yet another invitation, this time making sure it was delivered, withing half a hour I had already more than a dozen attendees.

The dinner could had been a francophone dominated one had all the booked ones actually showed up, while eventually only 3 out of 6 did, leaving to the italians (5) the title of largest group, followed by french (3), UK (2) and 1 each for Germany, Belgium, Philippines, Japan, Croatia and USA.

The place itself was not easy to find, somehow off the beaten track in the Piazza Bologna Area, and that took its toll on the arrivals which were scattered over one hour and a half, so much that I eventually the dinner began while some were still missing.

Once started, tho, the dinner went smoothly. Tasty the vegetable Felafel, between good and obscenely good the various vegetable creams that were served as appetizers together with some spicy arab beans that went by mostly unnoticed. The particular arab bread was nice, while the very big mistake was picking some arab wine from Morocco, overpriced and with a dubious taste.

Once the appetizers were, quickly, disposed of, the main courses made their appearance, with mixed results. While the Swharma chicken served with white rice with raisins and pine nuts was so good that I lost the count of the times I (together with others) served myself and the vegetarian cous cous met the general appreciation, the kebab was extremely disappointed, served in big, oily pieces and left not fond memories behind itself once it was gone (above, to the right, the "asian corner" dealing with the kebab cutting task).

The VCN crowd was showing evident signs of having been properly fed by the time the tables was cleared for the last part of the dinner: mint tea accompanied with special arab pastries that, I must say, looked delicious but I didn't even try, having and indulged too much and eventually succumbed to the shwerma chicken. It was about eleven when the group finally disbanded and while the final bill was higher than the last dinners (around 24 for the ones who had taken the wine, 20 for the others) , the dinner appeared to be a success.

Next time: Vietnam.

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Greece

Now that I've 5 minutes, here we are (oh, and you can, as usual, click on the pics to get a larger version).

The last VCN dinner was slightly more difficult to organize than the previous ones. On one hand, someone decided to pick exactly the same day to have a VCN carnival party (well, ok, it was fat tuesday after all), on the other hand, for the first time, I had to pick a restaurant without any external suggestions and with no previous first hand experience, or so I thought, given that eventually it turned out I had been in the restaurant I had chosen, even if a whole 10 years ago.

Anyway, my worries turned out to be unjustified, as eventually 19 people showed up, from Italy (5), US (4), France (2), Canada, UK, Philippines, Sweden, Belgium, Hungary, Croatia and Serbia (those two happily sitting next to each other), with only one person missing, making it one short of the number I set myself as the maximum.

The restaurant was small, cozy and even if not terribly atmospheric, it still gave the people a nice feeling and I must say the crew there was beyond praise as they dealt, first or all, with an unexpected number of vegetarians (I had signalled 2, when indeed we had three) and then with another couple of people changing their mind at the very last moment about the pre-arranged menu. Speaking of which, also the food turned out to be very agreeable, even if I made the bad mistake of serving myself of tzatziki twice before realizing it had cucumbers inside.

Time passed quite fast, helped by a very quick service and interesting talks. The ouzo (the typical Greek liquor made of anise) was not that great and mixed opinions were raised by the also typical white aromatic wine with pine's gum.

To make things even better, the final bill was not that expensive (for an ethnic restaurant in Rome, that is). So, I think I can honestly say, a very pleasant evening. Now, for the next time, we are heading to Africa... and once again I have no clue about which restaurant...

VCN Ethnic Dinners go to Peru

Yesterday was quite a day. Combining work, swimming, barber and then a dinner out all in the same evening is already difficult, but if weather plays hard against you and Rome's streets produce half a meter deep ponds for lack of drainage, then it becomes borderline crazy to do just one of the things. Somehow, I managed tho.

And so, we did have the 5th VCN Ethnic Dinner. After Mexico, Turkey, Eritrea, Thailand, it was the time of South America again and Peru in particular. Of course, Following the most obvious application of Murphy's law, after a winter absolutely poor of rain, yesterday we had a perfect storm to make logistics complicated for many of the participants. However, it didn't go all that bad, considering that of the expected 20 participants, 13 were stubborn enough to fight against the elements and make it to the restaurant and other 3 late comers made the whole number raise to almost the one considered in the original plan.

The evening turned out to be quite nice, the food tasty (and abundant, we all left overfed and there was still some leftovers...) and all in all inexpensive, considering that, with the exceptions of the ones who decided to try the Peruvian beer, we ended up spending less than 20 €.

(click on the pictures to see the enlarged version)

So, at 20.15, quarter of hour before the planned time, I was at the restaurant, which, as it can be seen, is in a definite Inca fashion. As it had to be Expected, there was no one yet, but already a message was waiting for me about the forfeit of 2 persons.

Prodigiously ahead of time, Can did show up a few minutes later.

But then, the storm took its tool and it eventually took 45 minutes before everyone managed to arrive at the restaurant and we finally managed to be all assembled and ready to start. Visible on the left Laura (Italy), Magda (Italy), Silvia (Italy) and Can (Turkey), on the right Claudia (Italy) and Cristina (Brazil).

The other side of the table. Visible on the left, Dario (Croatia), Isabella (Italy), Liesbeth (Belgium), Maria Rosaria (Italy), on the right Frances (USA) and, partially, Jean-Fracois (France).

Now why is everyone having their right fist up? Some sort of ancient Incaic ritual? The one on the left is Deborah (UK), then Jean-Francois and Frances.


Can tries the... slightly... spicy "orange" cream.

Isabella smiling... as usual.

Does Caroline (France) have a secret to tell? French people, for once, made the second most numerous group at this VCN dinner, whereas usually this position is taken by the Americans, this time represented by the sole Frances. The most numerous group was, as usual, the italian one.

Someone is apparently enjoying her food...

About half the people who attended this dinner had not been to another VCN dinner before. The atmosphere looseded up quickly anyway, and while some people were having fun and some had serious talks (talking with Deborah is Cliona from Ireland)...

...someone was doubling himself to control the table and make sure everything is ok with service and food (that's me).

But eventually I managed to relax as well. In the middle, Maria Rosaria (Italy).