Chinatown Cake Club: Baking's Speakeasy

Forget the retro speakeasy cocktail craze and drinking establishments with unmarked doors. Welcome to the rough and tumble world of back-alley baking. Macao Trading Co. pastry chef Victoria Howe is taking her baking skills to the underground with the Chinatown Cake Club.

The private invite-only tastings will be held, initially, in Howe's Chinatown apartment -- a move might necessitate a name change. The ground rules are simple: $10 gets you in for four hours and allows you to sample any tasty treats you'd like. There's also coffee and tea.

If there is one thing this city has been missing for a long while, it's a downtown club for gluttons. According to Joseph Mitchell, late in life, McSorley's founder John McSorley "was president of an organization of gluttons called the Honorable John McSorley Pickle, Beefsteak, Baseball Nine, and Chowder Club, which held hot-rock clambakes in a picnic grove on North Brother Island in the East River."

And while the Chinatown Cake Club sounds like a far cry from the John McSorley Pickle, Beefsteak, Baseball Nine, and Chowder Club, it could certainly be the start of a beautiful new movement for gluttons, especially if cocktails, as has been speculated, are added later. Unless, you have, you know, restraint.