Good Stuff Supper Club

The hobby chef Aishah Bennett aims to educate Berliners "that English cuisine is more than fish, chips and Jamie Oliver". Her menus, which typically combine European, South American and Middle Eastern influences, are complex affairs with thoughtful wine pairings. A recent hit meal involved home-cured gravalax, ostrich steak with a sweet potato gratin, and ricotta-aubergine rolls. The events are either held on the fourth floor of a chic apartment in Neukölln or in the bar Geist im Glas, which was just opened by the chef and her friends. More often than not guests stick around to drink and listen to music afterwards.
• Approximate location: Flughafenstrasse, Neukölln, facebook.com/Good.Stuff.Supper.Club. Monthly events, €40 donation for five or more courses

Travels With My Fork

Travels With My Fork is a versatile pop-up restaurant specialising in pintxos, the tiny dishes served in bars in the Basque country. The event began last autumn as a themed supper club: one night was Mexican, another was called 1001 Nights and served Persian cuisine – yet another was south Indian in flavour and given for Diwali. The focus on pintxos evolved after the Scottish-American couple came back from a trip to the Basque country with food cravings and realised that Berlin's tapas restaurants mainly served patatas bravas and chorizo. Now locals can enjoy piquillo peppers stuffed with bacalhau and baby eel tartlets.
• Prenzlauer Berg and various locations, twmfsupperclub.moonfruit.com. Check site for dates, €30 donation

Metti una sera a cena

In a ground floor atelier belonging to two visual artists, guests at this supper club gather around a long wooden table and swap stories while waiting for prettily plated experimental Italian food to appear. The cooks, Chiara Zanella Ferro and Marco Thiella, had a supper club in their native Venice before transplanting it to Berlin in 2010. Their art is strewn about the dining area: Marco creates cardboard sculptures and Chiara embroiders on plastic. Expect updated Venetian dishes such as briny, garlicky shrimp over creamy polenta and Parmesan ice-cream for desserts.
• Approximate location: Bötzowstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg; mettiunaseraacena.wordpress.com. Saturdays once monthly, €39-€49 suggested donation for five courses

Pret a Diner

Perhaps Berlin's most ambitious concept dining experience, the pop-up restaurant Pret a Diner has been known to occupy roller rinks, secret canalside locations, even a cavernous former mint. Each time, a different celebrity chef has taken to the burners. Most recently, a Michelin-starred Japanese chef was asked to use the sea as inspiration, and the result – which included an experimental sushi platter with truffle-egg maki rolls – was pricey but very exciting. Held on a white, glittery terrace, sponsored by Swarovski, the crowd on that night was relentlessly fashionable.
• Various locations in Mitte, pretadiner.com. Join the mailing list for dates and prepare to pay around €60 a head

The Owling Supper Club

After living in Paris, Nathalie Moukarzel arrived in Berlin intent on defending British cooking from its tepid reputation abroad. The English chef, who works in the well-liked Berlin restaurant Little Otik, began organising secret supper clubs with her boyfriend Cyril in February. She wanted to combine the Lebanese cuisine of her father's family with the greatest hits of British nosh: yorkshire pudding and quail feature as prominently as tabbouleh and tahini. She recently served a crispy pig's head to a party sitting on cinema chairs around a long table lit by white candles.
• Approximate location: Rosa Luxembourg Platz, Mitte, +49 178 656 2021, theowlingsupperclub.com. €33-€40 donation for four courses

Fortuna's Feast

An ideal way to start the night in Neukölln – the hot neighbourhood of the moment – is with a reservation at Fortuna's Feast, a Friday night tasting event run by chef and caterer Suzy Fracassa. Located on a bar-heavy stretch of Weserstrasse, the rustic two-room storefront has communal wooden tables, mid-century modern decor and friendly staff. The menu comprises seven small dishes, such as chicken fried steak and gravy, which are often Italian or American in style. A waiter will advise you to order two each, and share them with friends (€4-€9 each). The vibe is warm, the crowd is international, and the food is truly comforting.
• Weserstrasse 58, Neukölln, +49 30 6273 2538, fortunastable.de. Most Friday evenings

Lotería Supper Club

One of Berlin's most popular and also most mysterious supper clubs is Lotería, run by an American graduate student who cooks mouth-watering north Mexican and southern Californian feasts in between working on her thesis. This means that events in her intimate red-painted dining room are irregular but in demand. While Berlin offers a number of Mexican kitchens, none are as high-end as this, with dishes such as slow-braised duck in a rich mole poblano sauce, a tuna, halibut and avocado ceviche trio, and a chocolate-chilli souffle for dessert.
• Approximate location: Boxhagener Platz, Friedrichshain, loteriasupperclub.blogspot.com. Check site for dates, €35-€50 donation for a five-course menu

Thyme Supperclub

The supper club most admired by locals is Thyme, a year-old event helmed by an amateur chef from Bristol. Her expansive seven-course menus are rich in traditional English flavours, but dishes such as slow-roasted lamb with black olives and lentils and canapes of mini Scotch eggs are new to Berliners. The dinners take place in the large third-floor apartment of a 120-year-old building. An 18-person table, built by the chef's husband, is set up in a minimalist studio space. It's best to book a few weeks in advance – there's often a waiting list.
• Approximate location: Winsstrasse, Prenzlauer Berg, thyme-supperclub.com. Once monthly on Fridays, €40 donation for seven courses

Fisk & Gröönsaken

The most wallet-friendly of the Berlin supper clubs, Fisk & Gröönsaken is a fish and vegetable-only event run by a pair of Berliners. Jan, a biologist, does the cooking, while Melanie, a librarian, serves her husband's modern German food in their art-filled living room. Neither can fathom why some supper clubs in their city cost as much as Michelin-starred restaurants: their most expensive dinner – a three-course menu involving herb soup with a quail egg, bream fillet on bean ragout and buttermilk panna cotta– comes in at €23. Plus they're real Berliners, so have interesting suggestions about where to go afterwards.
• Approximate location: Helmholzplatz, Prenzlauer Berg, groonsaken.wordpress.com. Every six weeks, €18-€23 donation for three courses

Phoebe in Berlin

The Provence-trained Taiwanese chef Phoebe Wang ran her own French restaurant, Louis XIV, in Taipei, for more than a decade. The Chinese restaurants in the German capital did not impress her when she arrived in 2009, so she opened her 108-year-old apartment – full of traditional Chinese furniture – to visitors this April. The intention is to serve high-class Chinese and French fare on alternating evenings. Already known for her savoury French dishes – including lamb fillet coated with Gruyère cheese and Parma ham, and macaroons (which she sells) – Wang is now getting the chance to showcase the Chinese specialities, such as slow-cooked Poet's pork with broccoli, that she grew up with.
• Approximate location: Volkspark, Friedrichshain, phoebe-berlin.de. Bi-monthly on Fridays, €50-€65 donation for five courses

• Rachel B Doyle is a Berlin-based travel writer