A Long March on Sat 16 Feb 2013

Those of you who follow the teachings of Mao Zedong, that smiling but funless Communist despot who used to rule China, would be familiar with his famous sayings. Apparently, during the Long March (1934-1935), he used to come up with chirpy quotes like: "Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy," or "Firstly, do not fear hardship, and secondly, do not fear death," or "A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery." It is a wonder that anyone could put up with his wretched morbid company for so long. Well, we are not starting a revolution, we don't intend to face hardship or death and certainly we don't have any enemies to crush - but what we will be doing, instead of the above strident suggestions, is celebrate the coming of the Chinese New Year with dimsum at a very cool new Chinese restaurant.

So please do bring yourself (and your partner) but please don't bring your Little Red Book to our next dinner event on Saturday, 16 Feb at the Long March Canteen on Wrangelstraße 20, Kreuzberg, 10997 Berlin. We do not intend to quibble over cheerless drivel like "Politics is war without blood, while war is politics with blood" or other Maoist inanities like "History is a symptom of our disease" or "It's always darkest before it becomes totally black" - we will instead be having fun pondering our dimsum menu. The menu will be 28€ and consists of a selection of cold, fried, steamed and warm dimsum as well as a dessert (totally 13 different dishes) and I think this is a lot better than just sampling one or two different dimsum dishes. To have an idea about the kitchen have a preview on http://longmarchcanteen.de/.

The restaurant attempts to recreate the austere, communal dining style of the Communist era in a very tongue-in-cheek manner, mixing wooden benches and straw windows with modern lighting and sophisticated steamers - Mao definitely would not have approved, especially as the food here is reputed to be very good and authentic indeed.

The closing date for all bookings is Wed 13 Feb. As places are limited, please do book as soon as you can (sylvia@berlindinnerclub.com) - and if we have too many bookings, we will apply an electronic hat and apply a lower priority for those who booked for January but did not turn up without any polite messages or reasons.

Chris (on behalf of Sylvia)

PS. Talking of Mao (and other dictators) always reminds me of Geezer Butler, bass guitarist of Black Sabbath, who once said, "It's just a disappointment that after all these years, we're still fighting wars for a handful of people."

How it went on the night...

We had a good meet up before the dinner at Vögelchen, a place which really feels like being in someone's living room. Everywhere there were photo albums lying around and the place was decorated with cosy furniture. So consider coming here again just for the atmosphere.

The Long March Canteen is a very inviting, restaurant which looks pretty darn cool with its open and dark theme. They make all the dim sums by hand and if you don't believe this, then have a look into their open kitchen. Nobody knew what they were expecting when they signed up to come as the menu has not been given ahead of time. So it was real surprise to have such a variety of dim sum and everybody I am sure felt in love with some of them. First we had some cold dim sum such as cucumber salad in vinegar with garlic, fresh tuna with red beetrood salad and soya beans and pink rose beef strips dressed in a coriander chilli sauce. After that we had traditional fried dumplings with prawns, chicken, beef and vegetables. Then came the Shanghai pork with ginger, pork ribs, edamame, and scallops with silk tofu. To finish we had some baked banana, a lovely warm dim sum with chocolate inside and vanilla sauce. Maybe this was not so traditionell but it was still very tasty. For all of that we only paid 28€ and this was stunning value for money. We had really a good taste of some of their best dim sum and I definitely will go back to try all the other dim sum.