You may have seen over the last year or so that my life has become a minor infatuation with Chinese cooking. I'd always loved Chinese food but, except for a short cooking class in Chengdu, I'd never really dabbled in making Chinese food. All of that changed this year when I decided to do a dinner party of 10 of my nearest friends.
I liked cooking it for myself but that was nothing compared to cooking for other people. The idea of starting a supper club kept popping into my head, but it all seemed a bit self-indulgent and ridiculous. Friends suggested a sort of Come Dine with Me set up with rotating dinner parties, but that wasn't quite what I wanted to do. I wanted to cook my favourite Chinese food for my favourite people. To share the food that I discovered in China with the people in London, who might have never tried anything like it. How was I going to do that?
Over and over the answer kept being "Supper Club".
So in September I took the plunge and created an Instagram under the name of Laowai (老外）Supper Club. (Scroll to the bottom to get an explanation of the laowai part of the name)
Once the Instagram was live I had to commit and started planning the second Supper Club meeting.
The second Supper Club was a dimsum feast where I attempted xiao'long'bao (aka soup dumplings) - a disaster - as well as shu'mai and potstickers - less of a disaster. Since starting the 老外 Supper Club I've also dabbled in vegan Chinese cooking, making noodles from scratch, and trying to master dumpling wrappers. It's more or less what I was doing before, but now I have a (very small) platform to share the learning curve from.
I have decided to make 老外 Supper Club a quarterly event, partly due to the cost and time aspects, and hopefully I will be able to invite a range of different people each time. If you are interested in coming please let me know! My whole idea was that I would invite different people each time to share Chinese food with the broadest audience, but I am guilty of falling into the trap of inviting people who I talk to a lot and then it is very easy for seats to quickly fill up!
Next 老外 Supper Club is in January for Chinese New Year (this is the big one). The menu planning is underway, and there is going to be a definite Northern Chinese influence as a homage to Yinchuan, where I spent the majority of my time in China. Some flavours will be familiar, and hopefully some will be less so!
After January the 老外 Supper Club will come together in April, July, and October - I'd love to see some of you there!
What is a 老外？
A lot of you are probably thinking “why the hell is this called 老外 Supper Club?” or “what does 老外 even mean?”
老外 or lǎo'wài is literally translated as old foreign, and is a Mandarin slang term for foreigner. In Mandarin there are numerous ways to refer to a foreigner, or Westerner, but the one I heard the most was 老外.
I think that it is generally a pretty neutral phrase, I would walk down the street and have people literally shout lǎo'wài at the shock of seeing me, but it can also be a bit of a derogatory term. It depends who you ask!
Some people find it a bit naff calling yourself a lǎo'wài, but since I spent 2 years being called lǎo'wài I quite like it. As a 老外 with a passion for feeding other 老外 I will reclaim the term for my Supper Club!
Other phrases for foreigners:
外国人 （wài‘guó'rén), literally foreign country person. This is as neutral as you can get.
鬼佬 (gwai’lo)，a cantonese phrase meaning foreign devil/ghost man. Not particularly polite. Used more in the South of China and Hong Kong.
鬼子 (guǐ'zi), literally devil. This one is pretty rude and xenophobic. It’s not used often.
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