From SEGA and sake through to lemonade and laughing gas, via nitrogen, Instagram and rissoles. Here are ten foodie pop-ups, supperclubs, residencies and events that should be on your radar this month.
SEGA and sake
6 August
If you like those two Japanese creations, then this event held at the bar of St James’s plush Matsuri restaurant is for you. The evening kicks off with a sake tasting and masterclass, before SEGA consoles are brought out for a night of retro gaming. Think the likes of Dragon Ball, Final Fight, Shinobi, Space Harrier 3-D, Street Fighter II and Strider. Organisers REZtron also promise that the games will be displayed on SEGA consoles spanning four generations, should that interest you. Oh, and there’s 80s/90s karaoke, too. Need another reason? It’s free.
Tickets are free but essential, book here.
Burmese picnic
8 August
A nine-course sharing menu of Burmese food will be prepared by Kyi (pronounced ‘Chi’) of Dine with Kyi for a communal picnic-style supper on 8 August. She cooks dishes inspired by her Burmese mum and describes the cuisine of the country — that’s also known as Myanmar — as a hybrid of Indian, Thai and Chinese. The menu includes cauliflower and carrot pickles, mutton curry puffs, tamarind chicken curry and mango panna cotta.
Tickets cost £28, including a £3 donation to Mind to Mind Myanmar, a charity supporting mentally ill patients in Myanmar. The event runs from 7pm on Friday 8 August at Well Street Kitchen, 203 Well Street, E9 6QU. Book via Grub Club.
Surrealist suppers
14-16 August
Run by the wackily-named Lemonade & Laughing Gas, a surprise-filled surrealist dinner party is coming to East London for three nights this month. It’s all based on the ‘Diner de Têtes Surrealiste’ which Baroness Marie-Hélène Rothschild threw in 1972 — a deliriously extravagant party for guests including Salvador Dali, Audrey Hepburn and Richard Burton. Black tie and surrealist heads are compulsory according to the rules, and dishes look set to include the likes of ‘cheese of goat screaming in post-coital sadness’. Flo Hillier (ex-Moro) is cheffing, and we suggest you take a gander at the website if you’re intrigued.
Surrealist Dinner Party runs from 7pm-1am on Thursday 14, Friday 15 and Saturday 16 August. Tickets cost £45 including a welcome cocktail and are available here. The location is a secret, but it’s in East London Zone 2.
Cooking the colours
Various dates from 20 August-6 September
Collaborative supperclub troop The Art Of Dining is back this month with a set of dinners themed around colour. The Colour Palate events will see a series of courses varyingly coloured all green, red, yellow, white and black. The contents of your glass and the colours of the room you’re sitting in will also change accordingly. Combined with shifting music, it’s being billed as an exploration of how colours can spark off different emotions, and be varyingly soothing or stimulating, uplifting or sinister. The chef who’ll be running the event is Ellen Parr, who trained at Exmouth Market’s Moro restaurant.
Tickets cost £50 and are available here. Events run from Wed 20-Sat 23 August, Wed 27-Sat 30 August, and Wed 3-Sat 6 September. The dinners are held at Carousel, 71 Blandford Street, W1U 8AB.
Nitro ice-cream
Throughout August
If you have a hankering for a bit of Heston-style, pop into the Somerset House courtyard between now and the end of the month to sample Churn2’s liquid nitrogen ice-cream. Hailing from Boston, it comes in the form of a modified orange shipping container and will serve ice-cream in flavours such as strawberry cheesecake and lemon and basil, created instantly before your very eyes. There’s also promise of a popcorn flavour to tie in with Somerset House’s Film4 Summer Screen. It’s more lab than ice-cream van and smoky vapour adds to the Breaking Bad vibe, but we’re assured that no meth is involved.
Churn2 is open from 11am-6pm on weekdays and until 7pm on weekends, plus later when there are events on at Somerset House. Ice cream costs £2.50 for small tubs and £3.70 for large.
Instagram marshmallows
Throughout August
Take your snaps to a new level and eat your Instagrams thanks to the Boomf pop-up in Selfridges. Just pop in to the food hall and look for a vintage ice-cream bike, which has been teched up so that you can connect your Instagram, choose your photos and get them printed onto square marshmallows. Kate Middleton’s brother James is one of the guys behind the peculiar invention, head in before 3 September to see it for yourself.
A box of nine marshmallows cost £15.
Shopping and snowflakes
Throughout August
Snowflake Gelato serves posh ice-cream from its two boutiques in Westbourne Grove and Soho, but for the whole of August there will also be an outlet in Harvey Nichols, complete with seating. The gelato is made using only organic Jersey milk, organic cream and sugar, while handmade sorbets are also available. Flavours to revive weary shoppers include crème brulée, honeycomb crunch and sea salted caramel.
Sub another way
Throughout August
For a sub sandwich the way it should be, head to Dalston’s The Duke of Wellington pub where sandwich rockers Sub Cult are in residence. You might recognise them and their wares from Berwick Street Market but here you can enjoy the Anglo-American culture clash sarnies in style with fries and a pint or three. The menu changes regularly, but look out for the likes of the Sub-Marine, with scallops, bacon and pea salsa, or a Dub-Sub with pulled pork, jerk sauce, fried plantain, crackling, pickled onions and coriander.
Sub Cult serve from 6-10pm Monday to Friday and 1pm-10pm on Saturdays. The Duke of Wellington, 119 Balls Pond Road, N1 4BL.
Peckham dogs home
Throughout summer
Big Apple Hot Dogs are almost certainly London’s most famous dogs. Not content with popping-up on kerbs across town, this summer Abiye Cole’s venture has found a home at the Peckham Springs gallery-bar. The dogs will be selling every Friday and Saturday night from 6pm, while The Big Apple Sour has also made it onto the bar’s cocktail list in the sausages’ honour. It blends bourbon, lemon and sugar with a red wine float, but is completely pork free.
Peckham Springs, 22a Blenheim Grove, SE15 4QN.
Balls, beer, Brixton
Tuesdays until October
Led by Aussie Alex Motture, The Pickled Fork has a history of popping up and serving carefully sourced dinners around town. Its debut residency was on Coldharbour Lane earlier this year, and now it's coming home with a takeover of Brixton Village’s Cornercopia. Rather brilliantly named Moo, Baa, Oink, the menu here is based around rissoles (Aussie meatballs) of either the beef, lamb, pork or veggie variety. Local brewery By The Horns (based in Wandsworth) has also got involved, hooking dishes up with specially matched ales.
Moo, Baa, Oink dinners run every Tuesday from now until October. Food is served from 6.30pm-11.30pm. Just turn up or book by emailing [email protected].
