Alone in London with a day to kill, Jon Martin is hungry for an off-the-cuff adventure when he decides to show up for a meal at a stranger’s house.
A writer from North Carolina, Mr. Martin, 36, was finishing a trip to Europe and had just broken up with a friend. Dizzy from restaurant-hopping, he browses the event site DesignMyNight when he stumbled upon the Fengzhen supper club, a twice-monthly event that promises home-cooked Chinese and Southeast Asian feasts.
He found himself riding a southbound train to the end of the line and knocking on the door of a terrace house, where he joined 11 strangers to eat a 10-course meal prepared by Jay Zhang. The host, a hairstylist by trade, leaned into another passion that night: taking strangers through an indulgent culinary experience.
The experience, for which Mr Martin prepaid about £65, or $80, was “totally worth it”, and made him feel more connected to “real, everyday people living there and making the place what it is,” he said. “You get things in a supperclub that you don’t get in a restaurant.”
Before the pandemic, supper clubs in London became a popular alternative to the restaurant scene, offering a more family-friendly alternative for a night out. The events, often held in the homes of budding chefs, gained popularity in the 2000s, until lockdowns forced them to stop.
Now, with the return of communal eating, the trend has changed, with chefs old and new preparing dishes. With a little sleuthing, guests can eat Indian street food at the chef’s house, Malaysian cuisine at the local community center or Sri Lanka meals at a neighborhood cafe.
Finding events and lining one up can take a degree of research: Many local supper clubs, shared through word of mouth or social media, are the passion projects of self-taught cooks. want to test their skills in beloved dishes. Those who want to attract a wider clientele post their clubs on sites like Eventbrite and DesignMyNight or offers bookings on dining experience sites such as Eatwith and WeFiFo. Some clubs have gone viral with the help of TikTokers and food influencers. Visitors looking for a specific theme can even find supper clubs for looking for singles until now, lovers of comedy or Motown listeners music.
Ticket prices for events also vary, from £30 to as high as £150, matching the cost of high-end dining experiences.
What separates a supper club from a pop-up, enthusiasts say, involves distinctive markers: a place that, if not in someone’s home, is an intimate space rather than a restaurant. Diners tend to pay for food before they arrive, which observers say makes the experience less transactional. The menu is fixed (although dietary requests may sometimes be taken into account) and tends to involve a unifying story or theme, often drawing on the chef’s background. And diners, whether solo or in groups, are encouraged to mingle.
To achieve this, some supper club hosts use name-tags and icebreakers like pre-dinner quizzes. Others hope that shared tables, or a setting unique enough to be a conversation starter, will do the trick.
Eating in a Tube car
Last Saturday night in East London, I sat with eight strangers in a repurposed 1970s Underground train carriage as part of a three times a week. Tube Train supper club. As we crowded into the carriage seats, and waited for the first course to arrive, we exchanged introductions and cracked jokes about transportation. By the time the third course arrived — a Peruvian-Japanese dish of cured hake — two Swedish tourists to my right and a group from Kent to my left covered Brexit, NATO and the city’s noisiest train line. In the final course – a sponge cake drenched in amaretto – someone ordered a round of Negronis for the table and the conversation turned to sibling rivalry and bad dates.
“You can meet all kinds of people you wouldn’t have met otherwise, and just sit there for hours and talk about this and that,” says Karin Kragenskjold, a psychologist from Stockholm who brought her sister at dinner after seeing it on social media. “I really liked it.” He paid £67 for the evening meal, although drinks were charged separately.
Supper clubs have become prevalent in Britain’s capital during a buzzy time in London’s food scene. Their popularity has been fueled by food bloggers and critics who hail them as a more authentic alternative to the posh restaurant scene.
“There’s something quite intimate, anarchic and unusual about going to someone’s house you’ve never met,” said Kerstin Rodgers, the author of “Supper Club,” a cookbook and how-to, and an early adopter of the trend who began hosting grass-roots events in 2009 at her home. “It’s an intense sport.” (In July, he hosted a “Barbie and Ken” themed food club.) Supper clubs have “fundamentally changed” the way Londoners eat, he says.
For chefs who feel shunned by traditional food career paths, the events offer a route to success in the industry. “It gave me the confidence to work and start my own business,” said Ms. Rodgers.
Among the high profile success stories is British restaurateur Asma Khan, whose journey from supper club chef to Soho restaurant owner was profiled in an Emmy-awarding winning season of the Netflix show “Chef’s Table .”
Inspired by lockdowns
Until the lockdown, Akshi Shah Farrelly, 28, didn’t consider herself a cook. She started cooking to satisfy her cravings for her favorite Indian foods, “and it’s really edible,” she says, laughing. “I thought – let me get on with doing this.”
An English teacher by profession, she started hosting a monthly Jamanvar supper club — the name means “feast” in Gujarati — at his home this year, posting tickets to Eventbrite.
At one sitting this year, 10 guests who paid around £35, were gathered family style around the Farrelly family dining table. Their conversation was deep when Ms. Farrelly emerged from the kitchen to introduce the next dish: pav bhaji skewers, part of a six-course menu he spent weeks preparing.
His wife rushes around the table in an apron, serving food. His teenage nephew politely topped up everyone’s glasses. Although they have never met Ms. Farrelly, some guests drove nearly an hour to attend dinner at his home. After dessert was served, he poured a drink and joined in the fun.
But even professionally trained chefs have found success with the format. After culinary training in Argentina and working in restaurants in London, Beatriz Maldonado Carreño, 46, was looking for a place for her growing supper club. He and a colleague decided to hire a decommissioned Victoria line train parked in a museum in East London.
“It couldn’t be further from London,” said Ms. Maldonado Carreño added that the Latin-inspired menu is a nod to the city’s growing Latino population.
Aspiring and established chefs who host supper clubs say they are driven less by profit than by the desire to feed people and create connections.
“What people look for in a supper club is a certain level of authenticity,” said Alice Whittington, 41, who runs a Malaysian-themed club under the name. Eastern Platters. At her dinners, hosted at neighborhood bars and community centers, Ms. Whittington creates shareable courses meant to be passed on, and curates a playlist of Southeast Asian music.
He was surprised, but delighted, when a group of New Yorkers, who said they discovered it on social media, dined in November. “I created this supper club around my community in London. I’m very excited to show outsiders what it’s like,” he said, adding that he wanted to challenge the idea of the “stiff upper lip” of the British. . “You will meet interesting, new people who will change your beliefs about London.”
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