Dinner Club

Dinner Club is back at Dinner Club in Neepsend on Friday 23 October, starting at 19:30. It's a seven-course seasonal tasting menu built around local produce, with every dish prepared and served by trainees on the venue's hospitality training programme. The whole thing is run by chef Chris Hanson, and the table is set for a maximum of ten guests, so it stays a small, intimate affair rather than a big restaurant crowd.

The venue itself is inside Merchants House, which opened in January within the historic Merchants Court complex. It's a 19th-century industrial site that once formed part of the William Turners and Sons of Caledonia Steel and File Works in Kelham Island, so the room carries a fair bit of the area's industrial heritage. On the wall is a large mural by Sheffield artist Paul Staveley, which works its way through city icons: Henderson's Relish, the Park Hill flats, the Crucible Theatre and Def Leppard. It's a proper Sheffield room to sit in while you eat.

The training element is the core of the night. The trainees on the programme, run by owners Scott Martin and Lee Dallinson, are the ones doing the work—preparing the courses and serving them to the table. The experience is framed as 'Seven Courses. Zero Rules. Pure Talent.'

It runs every Friday and Saturday night, so if this particular date doesn't work, there's always another. The tasting menu starts from £35 and goes up to £70 per person. You'll find it at Unit 1A, Neepsend, S3 8EN, inside Merchants Court on Mowbray Street in Kelham Island.