VANCOUVER DAZE showcases and highlights the social life and scene of our beautiful city, covering all the misadventures and shenanigans at various cultural events, mixers, parties, meetups, and local happenings. We fiercely promote all the fun times the city has to offer along with the interesting people behind them. Follow more of my work/coverage over at RICKCHUNG.COM and on Twitter at @RICKCHUNG. You can pitch me HERE.

Volume 35: The Social Feed long table communal dinner at Nelson the Seagull on September 22, 2011. More photos available on Flickr and Minoru Blvd.

Last night, I joined the ultimate experience in social dining. An adventure in long table social eating interaction, I joined the folks at The Social Feed for one of their dining adventures at everyone’s favourite, new Gastown coffee shop and eatery.

At Nelson, named after the former President of South Africa, we dined on a relatively basic yet delicious set three course meal mixed with social interactions among friends and strangers. It was fun having dinner after hours in the daytime cafe.

Keeping with the South African theme,  we ate some Umngqusho, made of leek base, samp, beans, chorizo, and kale.

The main course was a roasted shoulder of lamb served on mashed veggies with capers.

The highlight of the night was the delectable the Malva sticky toffee pudding with cointreau and apricots. I can’t describe simply how tasty it was.

The idea was to talk to strangers as I ran into friends and through talking ended up meeting friends of friends and familiar faces from the past.

It was a lot of fun and the food was delicious. I highly recommend the dining experience. As it turns out, the organizers are headed out east to bring the concept to Toronto.