SanDiegoVille Readers Get A Free Dinner Lab Annual Membership Plus $20 Credit For A Limited Time | Sign Up Now And Attend The November 19 Friendsgiving Feast

November 5, 2015

Because Dinner Lab appreciates informed diners, they have partnered with SanDiegoVille to offer our readers and followers a FREE annual membership! Just register at dinnerlab.com/signup/sandiegoville by November 20 at 11:59pm and, in addition to your free annual membership to Dinner Lab, you'll also receive $20 off your first ticket purchase, which you can use at the next Dinner Lab San Diego event on November 19 - five courses paired with Samuel Adams beers for a special Friendsgiving-themed supper!

Dinner Lab is a popular, well-funded, membership-based, traveling pop-up dinner company that "exists to bring people together with new ideas in food." The company does this by hosting exclusive dinners at obscure locations in various cities throughout the U.S., where they give undiscovered chefs a creative platform to prototype new dishes and ideas through a multi-course, themed dining experience. After the meal, the intrepid diners provide detailed feedback to help the chefs and company iterate and grow. Dinner Lab is backed in large part by investors including Whole Foods, so, in addition to being a source for exciting meals, it's really a method in research and development for the upscale food industry. Dinner Lab was first launched in New Orleans and has since spread to more than 20 cities.

Locations like this make Dinner Lab extra special!

Dinner Lab operates through a membership model where one pays an annual fee up front ($175), which provides members access to the calendar of events for the member plus one non-member guest. The company claims that this is not in the interest of exclusivity, but rather as a means of subsidizing the up-front cost of the meals - hiring people, renting a kitchen, etc. Guests then pay for each dinner (average $60-80) and have access to not only events in the local market, but in every other city that Dinner Lab operates. Tickets are purchased through the website beginning a few weeks prior to the event, and prices are inclusive of at least 5 courses, tax, gratuity, and alcohol.

Dinner Lab pulls about half of their participating chefs from the local market while the others are top performing chefs brought in from from other markets. The locations for the meals are only revealed a day in advance and are always nontraditional, like an open warehouse or a parking structure roof - you get the idea.

Participating chefs at Dinner Labs around the country are asked to tell a story through their menus - recipes that speak to their background or heritage, ingredients they are passionate about, or completely new dishes they’ve been experimenting with on days away from the restaurant. Each time a participant attends an event, their feedback and suggestions are shared with the chef so that he or she may improve on their menu concept. Diners are asked to rate each dish’s creativity and taste, as well as each drink pairing, on a scale of one to five and also to decide whether or not the course was “restaurant worthy.” All of this information is aggregated and then delivered back to the chef.

The diners are not only helping the chefs to improve their meals, as Dinner Lab also has hopes to use the wisdom of the crowds to build on their compiled data and package it for any chef or restaurant looking to overhaul or create a menu. With big data becoming ever more necessary and valuable, owners can acquire original recipes that were surefire hits, rather than waiting for customers and critics to weigh in on Yelp or in person. And by serving prix fixe menus, Dinner Lab can demonstrate that diners loved certain dishes that they otherwise may not even try.

Dinner Lab guests come to explore new cuisines and community in a space that only exists for 24 hours. Local chefs are given a creative platform, a culinary theatrical stage of sorts, to prototype new dishes and ideas. Each chefs' menu tells a compelling story, and guests are encouraged to use this platform to provide honest and truthful feedback to the spotlighted chefs.

Mark your calendars for the next Dinner Lab San Diego event on Thursday, November 19, beginning at 7pm. Guest Chef DJ Park from Los Angeles joins Dinner Lab San Diego presenting his 5-course menu, Friendsgiving, as told by Dinner Lab and Sam Adams, with special beer pairing by Sam Adams. The menu for the 11/19 Dinner Lab includes:

• Pickled & Smoked Crudité with winter lager crème fraîche and olive powder
• Corn Porridge with ember charred corn, toasted walnut and smoked cream
• Roasted Vegetable Stuffing with croissant stuffing and Thirteenth Hour stout & umami gravy
• Surf & Turf with charred lobster, roasted duck, pickled berries and jus
• Rustic Apple Tart with toasted walnut and spiced cream
• Samuel Adams beers including Winter Lager, Boston Lager, Rebel IPA, Tetravis, New World Triple, Stony Brook Red, American Kriek and Thirteenth Hour Stout

Get your free membership now at dinnerlab.com/signup/sandiegoville!