End of Gypsy dinners in Seattle

It was such a good time, it was bound to come to an end. Could anyone have predicted it would be an inside job, though? Today, Gypsy Dinners as we know them came to an end. Someone narked on the the associated cooking school, Culinary Communion, where most of the dinners took place, noting that it served wine to its students. This is a no-no in the Nanny state of Washington: as people paid for the class, so in effect they are paying for the wine, and the school did not have a liquor licence. So the school was fined, and threatened with random auditting. An email was sent out placing all wine and drink classes on hold until locations can be found.
To be on the safe side, Gypsy dinners were cancelled. Below is the emailed announcement:

April 10, 2008 (8 days shy of 4 years)
Camelot has ended. We wake up, we go
to work, we come home, we occasionally eat out. Most lives are fashioned after
this pattern. Most restaurant's lives are as well: make food, sell food, clean
up, go home. Sometimes, a very magical sometimes, restaurants are able to
trancend the merely ordinary and in doing so, transform to some small degree the
lives of its patrons. Gypsy has been this magical place for many many people.
New friends, new ideas, new love, a salon of creativity. But as with all things
destined to touch hearts, evil waits to take it away. We have been betrayed.
Gypsy as we know it was too scary a place to exist, so now it doesn't. We are
going much deeper underground. Those who really know how to get ahold of us,
please email (please don't call us), we will start a new list, a more protected
list. Dinners are cancelled for all intents and purposes. And to the traitor to
the clan we offer you this: May you never sleep well, may laughter sound bitter
in your ears, and may food always taste like ashes to you...this is our Gypsy
curse. You have destroyed a good thing.

Of course, they will be back, more cloak and dagger than before, and not so "wink, wink, nudge, nudge (secret dinner coming--be there)".

We got turned on to our first dinner a few years back and sat with a riot of a table. To tell you the truth, I wanted the office to supply me with a blackberry so I knew instantly when a dinner was announced--although I quickly learned that even if I could afford the dinner, I could not eat like that except once in a blue moon. One of my earlier blog entries, and certainly the most googled, regards the dinner prepared for Anthony Bourdain, where I got to eat at the rehearsal dinner. We made some great friends through the network that developed, so it is truly sad that it seems as though someone, for some disgruntled reason, told authorities all sorts of things just to ruin the party for the rest of the community.

Everyone will have to be more careful, more secretive, maybe even more selective. The inspiration and drive of Gypsy will bring it back stronger than before, but it will be different, less innocent.