Come round for a meal. It's always a beautiful offer, and especially appreciated by those who, like me, are too terrible at cooking to be able to reciprocate. Home cooking is more intimate, more casual and in many cases, makes you feel more special.
But in some parts of the world, you can dine at the home of a chef. I first had this experience in Cuba, where the growth of tourism – and the hard currency that it brought into the country – exposed a shortage of state-approved venues for accommodation and dining.
The government didn’t want to permit entrepreneurs to open businesses in the ‘public square’ as though it were some tawdry Western country, but it decided to permit trusted individuals to invite tourists into their homes for a meal or a bed – ironically creating, through its desire for tight control, lots of small businesses.
Some enterprising types opened their spare bedrooms to guests, but those with a culinary bent converted their apartments into restaurants known as paladares. The food is generally better and the prices cheaper than in the designated tourist restaurants, which, when I was there, all seemed to serve mediocre pizza
It’s also rather charming to dine in somebody’s lounge room while they cook your meal in the adjoining kitchen. We suspected that only the elite had big enough apartments to offer the service, but it nevertheless provided a slice of ordinary Cuban life.
At first, I didn’t exactly fall in love with the local cuisine, which seemed to consist only of grilled meat, rice and black beans. But when we visited Havana’s most famous paladar, I soon got a sense of how wonderful the city’s restaurants might be if more varied produce were readily available and chefs were encouraged to cut loose.
Visiting , which is recommended by every guidebook, feels like walking onto a movie set – and indeed, the space featured in the movie Strawberry and Chocolate before being converted into a restaurant. It’s hidden away in a romantically crumbling building, and the grilled lamb, suckling pig and gazpacho were by far the best things we ate in Cuba.
But my favourite private dining experience was much less fancy still. In one of Tokyo’s student areas, Takadanobaba, there’s a jazz club called which must be the world’s smallest jazz club. It only seats a total of ten in the cramped underground space – including the musicians. When the pianist is sitting at the keyboard, nobody can get in the door.
The atmospheric La Guarida in Havana. Source: Getty Images
It feels like a late-night party at the cosy apartment of students with an unfeasibly large booze collection, and even if you come alone and can’t speak Japanese (like me), the regulars will be sure to engage you in conversation.
Such a small audience can’t drink enough to pay two musicians and a staff, so the owner cooks dinner for you – and for the musicians, who stop playing and eat a slap-up Japanese meal with the audience. It’s an extraordinarily intimate experience, and the best way I’ve found to try home cooking in Tokyo.
The most exciting place for dining with chefs, though, might just be in Hong Kong, where some gung ho chefs have turned their apartments into ‘’ restaurants. Occasionally they become established, but it’s not technically legal, so they often pose as member’s clubs. We visited one hidden Sichuan restaurant called where the chef comes out to sing Chinese opera for her guests at the end of the meal.
The food’s delicious, and the restaurant’s now so famous that it’s in the guidebooks, but there’s no sign – you still have to know about it. Adventurous locals love telling stories of traipsing through ordinary apartment buildings deep in the New Territories to find some low-priced gem hidden among regular families’ apartments.
Private kitchens can be an excellent way to get noticed – SBS’ own Rachel Khoo began by inviting guests to her tiny apartment in the Paris neighbourhood of Belleville. It wasn’t long before she was doing the same thing on television (catch now on SBS and also SBS on Demand). And like an Uber for food, the Foodikted platform is creating across Australia. The way things are going, it won’t be long until you can enjoy home cooking every night of the week by popping round to a neighbour’s.
Some consider white linen and elaborate service in an ornate dining room the pinnacle of eating out. But the experiences I remember often involve some hidden-away spot where I can briefly pretend that an excellent chef and their team are close personal friends.
The understated entrance to Da Ping Huo. Source: Getty Images
Rachel Khoo in her Paris kitchen. Source: Plum Pictures / Little Paris Kitchen
