Introduction to the MDC

Hello and welcome to the Metropolitan Dining Club website. This first post should help to familiarize you with the purpose of the club and bring you up to speed on events to date. The Metropolitan Dining Club, otherwise known as the MDC, was created in April 2007 by Tom Saffell. By posting an ad on Craigslist to feel out interested parties, Tom recruited seven people to go dining out in addition to his three roommates at the time. On May 6th, the first MDC meeting took place at David Craig Bethesda, a restaurant in the heart of Bethesda, MD. Only one of the Craigslist respondees showed up, but the club flourished anyway. The folks who did end up going to David Craig enjoyed delicacies like squid-ink-dyed pasta, fried green tomato salad, and myriad other tasty dishes.

After that, the rest is history. More people ended up coming to subsequent events and the core membership of the club is close to 30 or so participants. Meetings were planned to occur monthly and a set method for dinner meetings was established and now all events follow this methodology. It's really quite simple ... here are the steps:

1. The facilitator sends an e-mail to potential participants informing them of the arbitrarily selected date and location
   
2. The participants RSVP with their availability for the chosen date
3. Using the information gathered from the RSVPs, the facilitator makes reservations in his/her name
4. The facilitator then sends a e-mail with the time, date, location, and reservation information to all those who originally RSVPed
5. The diners arrive at the specified restaurant, enjoy their meal and their company, and disperse afterwards
   

Traditionally, for the core club constituency as it currently stands, dinner meetings have been held on Sundays and have alternated by location rather regularly on a monthly basis, that is, the original May meeting was in Maryland, the meeting in June following that one was in Virginia, and then July 2007's meeting was in DC proper.

With only two meetings left in the first year of the MDC's inaugural run, the group is seeking to expand its scope and close the first year out right with a close-out meeting at Fogo de Chão, a Brazilian brasserie in the District. With regards to the expansion of the MDC's scope, this blog was created to provide a forum for public expression of impressions of various dining experiences as well as to provide a central locus for news on upcoming events. The monthly dinner meeting, while truly the core of the club's events' schedule, is not the final boundary of the club's vision. Since the humble beginning, various members have used dining club contacts to coordinate dim sum brunches, wine tastings, and other social events.

Once the final dinner meeting and the Fogo de Chão finale are completed, the MDC will be put on a summer-long hiatus to plan the next year and determine the direction of expansion. As 30 people is a large party to bring to a single restaurant, the expansion of the club will likely take the form of ancillary, or splinter, groups of diners interested in pursuing the mission of the MDC. If you are interested in becoming a facilitator of MDC meetings for new members or have a few friends looking to meet some new people and try some interesting DC cuisine, feel free to contact Tom at metropolitan.dining.club@gmail.com with any questions you may have and/or to discuss planning coordinated dining events. The goal for this first year of expansion is simple: to find one interested facilitator to aid in the creation of the first branch off of the main MDC membership.

It should be noted that the MDC is free and open to all who wish to join. That is, there are no member dues, but each member does pay for his/her own meal, obviously.

That's about all the exposition there is. The MDC is relatively new on the DC scene, but has high hopes and is optimistic with regards to its future endeavors. Membership has been steadily growing since inception, new events have been proposed, and all indicators point to a bright future for the club. Check this site often for news on the MDC's overall progress, MDC news, events, and various other informational tidbits.