Urte Rotz hosts dinners for strangers open to new friendships. They love it, often sticking around long after most other patrons have gone home. Photos: dpa
Table 14 is the most sought-after place to be seated at this restaurant in northern Germany.
Chef Urte Rotz hosts a monthly singles’ dinner at her establishment, “Urtes Wohnkuche”, or Urte’s kitchen/living-room.
She sets a festive table for her six registered guests, then serves up a three-course surprise menu.
“It’s not about dating, I don’t want to know people’s height or profession,” she says. For her, it’s about togetherness. And she wants the people who sign up to be open-minded, she says.
Urte Rotz sits at her restaurant, where table 14 is the most sought-after as, once a month,she hosts a singles dinner. Here, she prepares the table for the six strangers who are coming to eat together.
One of the attendees of this evening’s dinner is Ernst Schumacher, 80. It is the third time he has attended the meal, covering a distance of 60km there and back from Seevetal, close to Hamburg just for the dinner.
He read about the dinners last year, two months after his wife died, and decided to sign up.
“It’s wonderful to be able to talk. It’s such a brilliant idea, I forgot my bad mood for a few hours,” he says.
At the start, conversation among the group of strangers can be slow, but that picks up in the course of the evening.
“Then at some point it goes smoothly, everyone talks about their lives. Simply fantastic, I find the whole thing fascinating,” says Schumacher.
After one dinner party, he met up with another dinner guest separately. He’s open to making new friends, he says. But the most important thing, he says, is “(they) usually have a great time”.
The last dinner he attended, the group stayed on chatting for four whole hours. “I don’t know why other restaurants don’t do the same thing,” he says.
He says he definitely wants to launch the same initiative at his favourite local restaurant, closer to his home in Sittensen.
Rotz says yes indeed, people are usually still sitting chatting away at table 14 when most others have finished their meals at her two-storey rustic pub and are heading home.
“They tell each other their life stories, usually coming from very different backgrounds,” she says.
She too hopes that other restaurant owners might try out her idea for themselves.
Usually, she has a cook who prepares the regional dishes in an open kitchen where patrons can watch.
She creates the menu, made up of local dishes, and also lists them on her blog.
The agricultural adviser came up with the idea of a dedicated meal for singles during the long evenings she wound up sitting alone in restaurants while on business trips.
Word of mouth has proved sufficient to ensure enough people come so far, with no advertisements or publicity needed.
Even before she ran her own restaurant, she tried cooking for strangers in her own home.
The guests usually didn’t know each other, but donated money at the meal for a good cause. “I come from a farming background and missed sitting round a big table,” says Rotz.
In summer, she gets up at four in the morning on weekends to bake her own cakes for the guests.
All the projects keeps her busy, leaving little time for holidays. For her, the most important days are special occasions such as her grandchild’s first day at school, for example.
She has always been independent, running a large farm with agriculture and livestock and continuing the business after her husband died, before later handing it down to her son.
More details of her life can be found in her autobiographical novel whose title translates as “Red Wine Whims”.
She describes her work as a parliamentary party leader, representing Germany’s conservative Christian Democrats on the district council for several years. Underlying it all was her long-running wish to return to life near her old farm.
On the front cover, meanwhile: A glass of red wine, a cow smiling cheerfully, a mountain sketch, a plate and table setting – and a heart. – dpa/Britta Korber and Philipp Schulze
