Polish X-Mas Dinner / Blind Date with Eleven

Yesterday I enjoyed a delicious christmas dinner with eleven people I have never met before - and it was a great evening!

Oak & Ice, the Bitcoin accepting ice cream parlour which hosts our BXB / Steemit meetup, offers dinner events in their newly opened basement room. Selling ice cream is surely not the best business in the German winter, so it makes sense that they diversify.

Chef Julia Bosski, who is also a jazz singer and ambassador of Polish culture in Berlin, created a five course dinner which blended traditional Polish cuisine with tasty food from around the world. 

The twelve dinners participants came from Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Ukraine, Poland and Germany - a normal constellation for an event in Berlin, which has become quite international in the last years.

The first course was herring "Jewish style", pickled in honey, cinnamon and walnuts. The only Vegan at the table had a lentil pastete with cranberries. Julia had prepared a bit too much of the vegan food, so everybody could try some of it, too.

Then Julia served a classical Polish Żurek sourdough soup with egg and sausage. Our vegan had a special borschtsch soup, which consisted not only of beetroot, but also of raspberries. 

The third course was red cabbage in mulled wine with raisins, nuts and dark chocolate. You see, Julia adds some special tastes to Polish food.

The main course was one of Julia's favourite creations: Pierogi (dumplings) filled with minced beef and kimchi. This traditional Korean dish, which consists of spicy pickled cabbage, goes surprisingly well with Polish cuisine. Fusion at its best!

This is how the beef and kimchi filling looks before it goes into the pierogi.

Vegans had gnocchi made of sweet potatoes and beetroot.

An evening in Oak & Ice would not be complete without their awesome ice cream, which is manufactured from natural ingredients in Opole, Silesia. We had poppy seed / toffee and white chocolate / almond ice cream.

And of course there is no polish dinner without vodka. When Poles drink vodka, they make sure to eat enough with it, which we certainly did.

With Tusia (Canada), Adam (Poland), Ron (Canada) and Tania (Ukraine)

I had great conversations, especially with the two Brazilians and some Ukranians and Canadians of Ukranian origin. After the dinner finished at around 11pm (that's when dinners in Argentina usually start) we went on to have some beers and share some more stories. 

I learned that traditional christmas dinners in Poland and Ukraine consist of twelve courses (because of the twelve apostles?), but while the Poles do not take that too seriously and would also serve a christmas dinner with five courses (as in our case), in Ukraine they would not dare to serve less than twelve courses.

I think I will go more often to those "blind date dinners"!

And of course I paid in Bitcoin.