I found myself following a small circle of people doing interesting things in London: James Ramsden and The Young Turks who became The Clove Club, among others, were hosting small dinners in their houses or in other interesting small venues around the city, and more ideas started to form in the back of my mind.
I have never wanted to have strangers round to my house for a supper club – the thought of people nosing round, trekking upstairs to the loo or staying too long is just all too uncomfortable. I do not want to be in an episode of Come Dine With Me – no way. But the planning I had been putting into dinners for friends and family began to turn into ideas about a dinner for the public.
After a lot of notes, scribbles, thoughts and ideas I decided to just go for it.‘Come to a pop-up feast in a shipping container,’ I tweeted and a day later twenty people had booked in to do just that. Who knew people were so keen to dine in a little metal box in the Ouseburn? A lot went into that evening: thinking about menus, styling and imagining who might actually want to come. Much of the menu was inspired by Joe Beef, a Montreal institution I’m determined to visit one day and also one of my favourite cookbooks – full of smörgåsbords, home smokers, oysters and sausage martinis, it’s all right up my street.
My first supper club was about to become a reality. I didn’t know what to charge people for the evening: who was I to ask for thirty or forty pounds? They didn’t know if I could cook or if it would be any good. I didn’t have any reputation, a booking system or any means of taking payment at this point, so I settled on an idea that I had heard about in a place in Berlin where guests were given an envelope at the end of the evening and asked to ‘pay what you feel’. It was a risk, but I had tried to keep my costs as low as possible and it seemed like quite an exciting way to play it.
People began arriving just after seven – a few friends for moral support, but mainly strangers. There was a bit of polite chatter, which quickly grew in volume as guests settled in. Even at that early point in time, when it was just literally a box, there was a lovely atmosphere in the space. I have always enjoyed hanging out there: fire burning, music playing, hot toddies on hand.
We served a delicious cocktail of whisky, ginger ale, fresh lemon, orange, honey and cayenne pepper to warm the cold arrivals and it wasn’t long before it was noisy and warm. My nerves lasted much longer than those of the guests. I was hugely anxious, probably until very near the end. I put it down to it being the first event, but to be honest I still get nerves now; always incredibly tense until the main course has gone out, then I slowly begin to relax and see what a good thing we’ve put together.
The long table was laid ready with smörgåsbord starters as people sat down all together: home-made salami, pickled mackerel rollmops, sweet cucumber and horseradish crème fraîche with lavosh crackers, a dill and mustard potato salad, and my newest favourite discovery: Beer Cheese, a Joe Beef recipe that blends blue cheese, cottage cheese and cream cheese with hot beer, garlic and paprika.
There was no oven or equipment in the containers at this point so I cooked the pork at home slowly for nine hours and then had to send Adrian on a quick pork run back to the house; it was so soft, sticky and delicious, it just fell apart. I calmed down a little at that point – perhaps the glass of red wine helped. The pork was taken to the table alongside a secret recipe of baked beans, my own special barbecue sauce, creamy coleslaw with apple and toasted pumpkin seeds and fresh white home-baked buns.
Loud laughter and chatter filled the shipping container, the windows had steamed up and the woodburner was puffing out wood smoke and keeping us all very warm. Pudding was a collection of Campari and bitter orange jellies, warm pumpkin spice muffins and little chocolate and chestnut pots made with melted chocolate, cream and chestnut purée, served with coffee and a splash more wine.
We opened the envelopes excitedly at the end. I found on this occasion (and into the future, as I used this method for quite a long time) that people generally left between twenty and thirty pounds. People were sometimes less or more generous, but it usually balanced out nicely. Once an envelope contained a hundred pounds; a few times there was nothing! One of the nicest things about the envelopes was the lovely messages people would write on them, showing real genuine warmth and thanks for the food, experience and new friends they had made. I still have a stack of them at home that I like to keep.
We ended the night dancing round the fire in the shipping container, watching kids throw fireworks into a burning bin over the other side of the valley and eating leftover pulled pork – a pretty lovely evening all in all.