The strangers at my dinner table

A host prepares for the dinner gatherings. [Photo provided to China Daily]

One host, Liu Yang, is widely regarded as Beijing's preeminent cheese maker.

More than 10 years ago he was in France studying business when he had an epicurean awakening - to the glories of soft French cheese.

Now his cheese shop, Le Fromager de Pekin, in northwestern Beijing, has a variety of French and other international artisanal cheeses, and the shop's clientele has expanded from expats living in Beijing to a modest group of Chinese.

Over summer Liu joined Huoli to promote cheese and its culture, offering app users cheese tasting and matching workshops.

On Huoli, he is presented as a China-born artisanal cheese master whose creations have won international awards, and he prepares a cheese-tasting feast almost every week, accompanied by talks about cheese and visits to his shop and studio.

He also offers five-or six-course dinners occasionally, using organic ingredients and cheese to educate people about the huge variety of cheeses and the many different ways they can be used.

Before that, he was a host at Woyoufan, one of the pioneering private kitchen online platforms in China. The app went public in January.

Cheese is relatively new to most Chinese, and it is difficult to find anywhere in the country to learn about it, Liu says. Woyoufan and Huoli have helped fill that gap by disseminating information about cheese and bringing together people interested in it, he says.

The apps can also be helpful in adding to the otherwise humdrum routine of people on business trips. One of those people is Li Zaoxian, 20, of Shantou, Guangdong province, who works for a cigarette company and often has to travel to Xiamen in neighbouring Fujian province.

"I got tired of eating in restaurant and wanted to try new things," Li says,

So now whenever he is in Xiamen he simply taps into Huoli to book a private dinner near his hotel. He came across the app in a promotion on a travel app, he says.

The private dinners he has attended in Xiamen have all been hosted by locals and attended by locals, apart from him, he says, and their hospitality has overwhelmed him. Apart from enjoying authentic Xiamen fare, he has also had a glimpse into how locals' live, he says.

However, Shen, the food critic, wonders about the shelf life of the likes of Huoli, particularly given the fierce competition between apps to obtain and keep diners and hosts. The apps will develop different features and initiate promotions to compete with rivals but doing so needs large financial outlays, he says, and it is difficult to know which apps will be profitable and survive, let alone thrive.