I have just arrived in London. Can I come and eat?
Jon Martin was alone in London and had a day to kill. He was hungry for some adventure when he decided to have dinner at a stranger’s house.
A writer from North Carolina, Mr. Martin, 36, was wrapping up a trip to Europe and had just said goodbye to a friend. He was tired of restaurant hopping and was browsing the event site DesignMyNight when he got the Fengzhen supper club, a twice-monthly event that promises a home-cooked Chinese and Southeast Asian feast.
He found himself taking a train south to the end of the line and knocking on the door of a row house, where he and eleven strangers ate a ten-course meal prepared by Jay Zhang. The host, a hairstylist by trade, had another passion that evening: taking strangers on a delicious culinary experience.
The experience, for which Mr Martin paid about £65 or $80 in advance, was ‘absolutely worth it’ and made him feel more connected to ‘the real, ordinary people who live there and make the place what it is’, he said. . “At a SUP club you get things that you don’t get at a restaurant.”
Before the pandemic, London’s supper clubs had become a popular alternative to the restaurant scene, offering a more family alternative to a night out. The events, usually held in the homes of amateur chefs, saw a surge in popularity in the 2000s until lockdowns forced them to shut down.
As communal dining has returned, the trend has evolved, with old and new chefs preparing meals. With a little detective work, visitors can eat Indian street food in a chef’s home, Malaysian cuisine in a local community center or Sri Lankan dishes in a neighborhood café.
Finding the events and lining them up can take a certain amount of research: Many local supper clubs, shared by word of mouth or social media, are the passion projects of self-taught chefs looking to test their skills in beloved cuisines. Those who want to attract a broader clientele post their clubs on sites like Eventbrite And DesignMyNight or offer bookings on food experience sites such as Eat with And WeFiFo. Some clubs are going viral with the help of TikTokers and food influencers. Visitors looking for a particular theme can even find supper clubs for it single people watch until now, lovers of comedy or Motown listeners music.
Ticket prices for the events also vary, from £30 to as much as £150, which is comparable to the cost of luxury dining experiences.
What differentiates a supper club from a pop-up, enthusiasts say, comes down to several characteristics: A location that, when not in someone’s home, is an intimate space rather than a restaurant. Diners tend to pay for the meal before it arrives, which observers say makes the experience less transactional. The menu is set (although dietary requirements can sometimes be catered for) and tends to contain a connecting story or theme, often based on the chef’s background. And diners, solo or in groups, are strongly encouraged to socialize.
To achieve this, some supper club hosts use name tags and icebreakers, such as pre-dinner quizzes. Others hope that shared tables, or a setting strange enough to be a conversation starter, will suffice.
Dine in a subway car
On a recent Saturday evening in East London, I sat with eight strangers in a repurposed 1970s underground train carriage as part of the three-times-a-week Tube Train Supper Club. As we squeezed into the seats of the carriage and waited for the first dish to arrive, we exchanged introductions and joked about transportation. By the time the third dish arrived – a Peruvian-Japanese dish of salted hake – two Swedish tourists on my right and a group from Kent on my left had covered Brexit, NATO and the city’s noisiest train lines. By the last course – a sponge cake soaked in amaretto – someone had ordered a round of Negronis for the table and the conversation had turned to sibling rivalry and bad dates.
“You can meet all kinds of people you might not otherwise meet, and sit there for hours and talk about anything,” says Karin Kragenskjold, a Stockholm psychologist who took her sister to the dinner after noticing it on social media . . “I really enjoyed it.” She paid £67 for that evening’s dinner, although drinks were charged separately.
Supper clubs became widespread in the British capital at a vibrant time in London’s food scene. Their popularity was boosted by food bloggers and critics who hailed them as a more authentic alternative to the glitzy restaurant scene.
“There’s something very intimate, anarchic and unusual about someone’s home that you’ve never met before,” says Kerstin Rodgers, the author of “Supper club”, a cookbook and how-to, and an early adopter of the trend who started hosting grassroots events in her home in 2009. “It’s an extreme sport.” (In July, she hosted a Barbie and Ken-themed food club.) Supper clubs have “fundamentally changed” the way Londoners eat out, she said.
For chefs who felt left out of traditional paths to a career in the food sector, the events provided a route to success in the industry. “It gave me the confidence to get work and start my own business,” Ms Rodgers said.
One of the high-profile success stories is British restaurateur Asma Khan, whose journey from supper club chef to Soho restaurant owner was profiled during an Emmy-winning season of the Netflix show “Chef’s Table.”
Inspired by lockdowns
Until the lockdown, 28-year-old Akshi Shah Farrelly didn’t consider himself a real chef. She started cooking to quell her cravings for her favorite Indian food, “and it actually turned out edible,” she said with a laugh. “I thought: let me keep working on it.”
She is an English teacher by profession and started hosting a monthly Jamanvar supper club – the name means ‘party’ in Gujarati – this year at her home, where she put cards on it Eventbrite.
This year, in one place, ten guests, who had paid around £35, sat family style around the Farrelly family dining table. They were deep in conversation when Mrs. Farrelly poked her head out of the kitchen to introduce the next dish: pav bhaji skewers, part of a six-course meal she had been preparing for weeks.
Her husband walked around the table in an apron and served the food. Her teenage nephew politely refilled everyone’s glasses. Although they had never met Mrs. Farrelly, some guests had driven nearly an hour to attend the dinner at her home. After dessert was served, she poured herself a drink and joined in the celebration.
But even professionally trained chefs have found success in the format. After culinary training in Argentina and working in London restaurants, Beatriz Maldonado Carreño, 46, was looking for a location for her growing supper club. She and a colleague decided to lease a decommissioned Victoria Line train parked at a museum in East London.
“It doesn’t get more London than that,” said Ms Maldonado Carreño, who added that the Latin-inspired menu was a nod to the city’s growing Latin American population.
Aspiring chefs and established host clubs say they are driven less by monetary gain than by the desire to feed people and make connections.
“What people look for in a supper club is a degree of authenticity,” says Alice Whittington, 41, who runs a Malaysian-themed club called Oriental dishes. At her dinner parties, hosted at neighborhood bars and community centers, Ms. Whittington creates shareable courses meant to be passed along and curates a playlist of Southeast Asian music.
She was surprised but delighted when a meal last November drew a group of New Yorkers who said they discovered it on social media. “I built this supper club around my London community. I’m very happy to show outsiders what it’s like,” she said, adding that she wanted to challenge the idea of the British people’s “stiff upper lip”. “You’ll meet interesting new people who will change your preconceptions about London.”
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