Amy’s Culinary Adventures

For a handful of intrepid chefs, a brick-and-mortar restaurant is no longer the proper forum to showcase their food and drink. Instead, they’re turning to private homes, art galleries and outdoor locales for one-off underground dining events that have sent shockwaves across the internet and the Twitterverse.

Hidden Agenda

 

The genesis of LA’s underground dining scene seems to be Ghetto Gourmet, a dinner series that started in San Francisco in 2003 and eventually went national. It was at one of these dinners in L.A. where Amy Jurist was drawn underground.

 

“I was enthralled,” recalls Jurist. “It was in this cool warehouse and didn’t find out where until the day before.”

Overnight, in a surprise twist, she went from guest to chef. “[Co-founder Jeremy Townsend] called me that night and said ‘My chef for tomorrow backed out’… I did the dinner for 60 people the next day.”

 

Now Jurist, the caterer behind Amy’s Culinary Adventures, hosts a bi-monthly “bootleg restaurant” known as Hidden Agenda. Diners fill family-style picnic tables at offbeat locations like art galleries, lofts and (in the summer) backyards that remain secret until one signs up. “This is a restaurant where the menu will never be the same, the people will never be the same, and it will never be in the same location,” says Jurist. “It’s kind of enchanting.”