Day 19: New flavours new friends

I had to turn down a lot of things today. I cancelled my tour, I had to say no to a concker hunting expedition with my favourite little boys and I couldn’t go to a swishing party (clothes swapping for those of you with dirty minds). But one thing I couldn’t miss was the Armenian feast I had booked for tonight on Grub Club.

So I dragged myself out of bed and got on a bus (that got diverted) and headed out to have dinner with 9 strangers in the flat of someone I didn’t know.

I arrived a bit late (thanks to the bloody bus) and was terribly worried but my host Nathalie (a beautiful bright eyed Armenian) didn’t seem to mind at all, instead I was promptly handed a cocktail and introduced to 9 people whose names I immediately forgot. Of course there were some obligatory Australians (they show up everywhere) and we easily started a conversation that gradually spread across the room. I spoke to Nathalie’s friends, her neighbours and some other people who randomly found her in Grub Club. It felt like any other dinner party and conversation was easy especially when we had such amazing food to talk about.

Nathalie is an amazing cook. It was 10 courses of light beautifully prepared food. Homemade dolmas, and baked eggplant with a pomegranate sauce and goats cheese and pistachios, and my favourite a spicy Armenian sujuk. All rounded off with cardamon tea and beautiful cakes featuring nutmeg and dates.

It was a wonderful evening and it certainly didn’t feel like a ‘pop up’ restaurant, it felt like a friend’s dinner party — even though I paid. And this got me thinking. Perhaps some of the magic of the sharing economy platforms like Airbnb, Uber and now I’d say Grub Club is that they remove the monetary transaction from the experience. Grub Club and Airbnb you pay before you go, and with Uber after, but there is never any money that changes hands at the time of the experience, and I think this is important. When we pay in the moment I think we switch to a different more analytical mind-set where we evaluate how much we think something is worth against what we paid for it. Whereas when we are distanced from the payment we are freer to just enjoy it, without the analysis.

In the end if if I put my analytical hat on I am not sure if the food was worth the £29 I paid for it, but the night certainly was.