Whenever the shallow man is in between love interests, I experience an issue faced by many busy city-dwelling professionals of a certain age. Most of my colleagues are married or have families as are most of my friends. Getting a man who has a family and a shall we say, extremely assertive partner, to go out for an evening, often requires lots of planning, sometimes weeks in advance.  The other option, of course, is to visit friends with families and listen to them spend the evening talking about their kids, showing pictures of the kids and listening to the latest events in the lives of their children.

Social Dining

Regardless of whether you’re an Expat or a local, it can be difficult to expand one’s social circle and make new friends. There are many options for online dating and if you live in a big city, plenty of places to meet flirting Lions and Antelope, indeed the shallow man is an expert in all forms of dating, but how to make new friends? This brings me to the subject of today’s post social dining in Amsterdam.

The shallow man recently attended a social dining event, which was arranged by a group called Saucially.  Their concept is that for twenty euros, you can have a three-course meal, arranged at different venues in Amsterdam, with any alcohol consumed naturally costing extra. Groups are normally limited to a maximum of twenty-two people.

As last weeks choice of venue was conveniently close to the shallow man bachelor pad in the Pijp, I dragged myself away from Grand Theft Auto and joined the event at a place I’d never been to before called Eten bij mij.

A beautiful restaurant featuring modern, clean interior design, whose centrepiece is a long table that can seat twenty plus people, which was of course ideal for the event. Upon arriving, we were given a welcome cocktail and spent some time socializing with a fascinating cross-section of people from all over the world. There were people from Sweden, Iran, the US, a number of Dutch locals, Russians, Irish, British and Bulgarians. I’ve probably forgotten some of the other countries where people came from.

There was a good mixture of friendly and interesting people at the event. Needless to say, the food, although not Michelin standard (what do you expect for twenty euros) easily exceeded the expectations of the shallow man. Lovely tasty hapjes, superb mushroom risotto and a 5k run worthy dessert. I was also told that the beef served was tender and melted on the tongue (which reminds me of a former date, but I won’t discuss this here).

There was a friendly and relaxed atmosphere and some very nice people with whom I shared an outstanding meal and some sparkling conversation.

This is definitely something that the shallow man enjoyed and wholeheartedly recommends as a way of meeting people from outside your normal social circle.

Summer, the organiser of the Saucially events also tells me that he’s planning to launch his social dining group in Den Haag and Utrecht.

For details on upcoming events please take a look at the website listed below.

http://www.saucially.com/tables/

No wallflowers were hurt during the writing of this article.

Buy the Amsterdam Confessions of a Shallow Man available from BOL and Amazon. More shocking than good service at the Oyster Club.