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To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article now * The Wall Street Journal * FOOD & DRINK * NOVEMBER 20, 2009 Some Sword Swallowers With Your Sushi? European 'Performance Dining' Mixes Gourmet Cuisine With Unusual Acts * Article * Comments more in Food & Drink >> * [IMG]Email * [IMG]Print * Save This -v More * * * Twitter Twitter * Viadeo Viadio * + More close * Digg * StumbleUpon * Yahoo! Buzz * MySpace * del.icio.us * Reddit * LinkedIn * Fark * Orkut * larger Text smaller By JEMIMA SISSONS [MGM performers at the launch of Proud Cabaret.] Jonangelo Lorenzo Molinari MGM performers at the launch of Proud Cabaret. It is 11 P.M. on a Saturday night in London, and an athletic woman with a shaved head, bright red lipstick and a black pillbox hat is on stage, stark raving naked, except for some strategically placed gold stars. As the lights dim, she pulls a blue balloon from what seems to be her bottom, and starts to blow it up. Then, with a loud bang it bursts, leaving a shower of multicolored glitter falling onto the faces of the bemused people in suits sitting below the stage, tucking into their braised pork belly. This is not a scene from a Baz Luhrmann film or some dodgy fetish club. It is in fact the new face of dining. The most entertaining thing about going out to dinner used to be some napkin origami from the Italian chef, or an over-enthusiastic rendering of peach flambe for dessert. Now you can find yourself picking over sushi next to sword swallowers, sampling chicken Kiev as a trapeze artist whizzes over you, or enjoying Dover sole as a German burlesque troupe works the room. Welcome to the weird and wonderful world of "performance dining." While you have been able to get a bad hamburger in an underground jazz club, sneak your way into small cultish places in hard-to-find locations for quite some time, performance dining, as it is being billed, has grown up. It has become far tastier and is now accessible to all. Furthermore, with prices ranging from around -L-30 to -L-60 (mostly with four or more courses) for a whole evening of great food and entertainment -- it is also a good credit crunch choice. [Kalki the hula hooper at Medium Rare.] Medium Rare Kalki the hula hooper at Medium Rare. Performance dining, in its essence, is the idea of mixing delicious food with unusual acts -- this can be anything from vaudeville, to magic, cabaret to burlesque, or even just great music. While food often used to be a post-script to the acts (such as in the tradition of "dinner theater" in the U.S.), now the quality of the cuisine has become just as important as the show. One of the leaders of the pack is Amsterdam's Supperclub -- famed for its outrageous acts and "anything goes" attitude. Started 17 years ago, and with clubs in four cities now, it will open its latest venue in London's Notting Hill next month. Cleo Vehmeyer, the director of Supperclub's holding company IQ Creative, says that it is all about letting oneself go: "It is about freedom, it doesn't matter if you are young or old, gay or straight. There are no windows in the club so you cannot see the outside world, here you can forget about your daily sorrows." As you would imagine from a company started out of the best traditions of Dutch liberalism, expect to be shocked (or, indeed, blindfolded during dinner -- they are very into "playing with the senses.") Their opening act is an Amy Winehouse look- and sound-alike, "with a twist." One of their most successful acts -- a man who holds his breath in a giant balloon for over eight minutes -- is also going to make an appearance. [Merante van Amersfoort performs as Amy Winehouse at the Supperclub.] Ruby Hoorn Merante van Amersfoort performs as Amy Winehouse at the Supperclub. They have recently opened in Singapore and Istanbul and expect to open in Los Angeles next year. Expect the wacky and whimsical -- such as a woman lying on a bed of oysters, which is then served to diners. Emphasis will be on first-class cuisine. As Ms. Vehmeyer says, "people are so spoilt for choice in London, we have to pay extra attention to our food here." One of the first ever to bring the idea of performance dining to London was Mat Whitley with his Medium Rare nights. Started eight years ago, he hosts monthly dinner parties -- which he bills as "variety shows" -- and scours the world looking for new boundary-pushing acts. He started out of frustration for theater-going in the city. "There was nowhere you could go and see live performance and have supper," he says. "When are you supposed to eat if you go to the theater? At 6 p.m. or 10 p.m. -- both really annoying times." Mr. Whitley is also at the forefront of London's newfound thirst for burlesque, and says that his "bread and butter" is hiring out his variety acts and burlesque dancers for corporate events -- which makes a change from the all-you-can-eat buffets and terrible karaoke of Christmas parties past. One theory behind the resurgence of the entertainment-dining experience is that none of us is ready for our pipe and slippers quite yet. Steve Ball, who opened the Blues Kitchen in London's Camden last month -- a moody bourbon bar reminiscent of a speakeasy playing live Blues every night -- thinks it's a sign of the times. "There's been a demographic change in London social scene," he says. "When my father was on the wrong side of 30 he stopped going out. There's now this whole generation who is bored of going down the pub, and now you need to offer a bit more." [The dining room at London's Pigalle Club.] The Pigalle Club The dining room at London's Pigalle Club. Yet they're not all aimed at a 30-plus crowd. Proud Cabaret, which opened this month in London's City financial district, is marketing itself as a venue for all. The brainchild of 40-year-old Alex Proud, who made his name selling rock-and-roll photography, the club has student nights on Mondays and Tuesdays, with low prices to match. But with its seductive purple velvet banquettes, pretty girls in flapper dresses and tempting grown-up nostalgic British dishes like prawn cocktail, Beef Wellington and sticky toffee pudding, Mr. Proud is also hoping to capture the imagination of the local corporate folk. "The other night we had a City crowd eating dinner, then the artsy lot all dressed for the cabaret and they all loved each other," he says. "People in U.K. have the propensity to be safe. What we are doing here is quite dangerous, we are being bold, trying to shake things up a little." Which means acts such as mouthy drag queen Myra Dubois, and "twisted pop cabaret" act Frisky and Mannish, who give their own take on modern pop icons. Other London spots serving up eyebrow-raising entertainment along with their food are Le Pigalle in Piccadilly and The Brickhouse in the East End (the scene of the outre balloon trick mentioned earlier.) Performance dining has its roots in the cabaret clubs of Paris at the turn of the century, which were melting pots for the intelligentsia, and also in the lavish Las Vegas style supperclubs that emerged in America following prohibition and the liberal Weimar-era Berlin of the 1930s, when the government put an end to censorship, and cabaret clubs cropped up across the city. Harking back to this period is Harald Wohlfahrt's Palazzo, which bills itself as "gourmet theater." One of the original performance-dining experiences that combines outrageous acts with haute cuisine, it started in a spiegeltent in Freiburg's Colombi Park in 1998, and now runs from October to February, delivering sell-out performances in tents located in cities across Germany, Holland and Austria. Many of the chefs hold Michelin Stars. Granted, it's not everyone's idea of fun. For some, their idea of hell is being trapped in a red velvet room with a stilt-walking transsexual burlesque queen, and possibly being asked to join in for dreaded audience participation. As Cleo Vehmeyer of Supperclub says, "this kind of evening is something you like or you don't like, never in-between." -- Jemima Sissons is a writer based in London. Write to Jemima Sissons at wsje.weekend@wsj.com Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page W4 Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. 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