A Night of Cultural Mingling
Once a month, Frederiksberg’s Café Cadeau opens its doors and bids everyone with even a faint interest in Chinese cuisine welcome. From 17.00-20.30 on these special, Chinese Eves, this non-profit café offers a small variety of home cooked, Chinese dishes. The first to appear before the staircase to the entrance on this Wednesday evening is a handful of CBS students from the Chinese propaedeutic course, eager to find out what awaits them just ahead. Cheerful smiles and laughs are exchanged as the door finally opens, allowing the crowd and yours truly into the building.
The room we enter is spacious and bears signs of being slightly older than first presumed, though chairs, tables, decorations and a few makeovers over time are doing their best to cover it up. The atmosphere that usually clings to older places like this, however, still lingers; the result is an unmistakable feeling of being welcome despite being in new surroundings. It doesn’t take long before orders have been taken and everyone is seated, absorbed into conversation.
The food is tasty and served in well-sized portions for 49 DKK pr. dish. Tonight’s menu is a minced beef and eggplant dish with rice. “Sort of like a Chinese style “kødsovs” with rice instead of potatoes”, as one remarks with a grin. Vegetables and prawns are served as side orders. On the menu is also a special vegetarian spring onion pancake (15 DKK), and for desert a very sweet Taiwanese pineapple cake (two for 5 DKK). To quench the thirst is a selection of soft drinks as well as Chinese green tea.
After a while new faces start to show up among the guests, and the café slowly starts buzzing with voices, an intermezzo of different languages as people change seats and start to mingle. The first students grab the opportunity to try out their Chinese and join some of the new arrivals, leaving others to speculate on how to approach in a good way, preferably in Chinese.
“You could ask them where the dining hall is!” one suggests, and the others laugh.
As more and more people show up, the room fills with even more chatter. As the evening passes the first courageous students are joined by their classmates, and everyone seems to have a good time. Being a propaedeutic student myself, however in Japanese, I find it hard to listen to some of the Chinese conversations, but I luckily find myself among a group of people eagerly discussing the (then) upcoming elections in tongues I can easily decipher.
I take my leave at 19.30-ish, well fed and convinced that this will not be my last Chinese Eve at Café Cadeau. Next Chinese Eve is held on 12th October, and I strongly recommend anyone interested in practising their Chinese, or simply just interested in having a good time, to show up and eat some good food, mingle and enjoy themselves.
