The pop-up/guerrilla/underground restaurant phenomenon was born at Christmas time in the East End of London. The public were lowing, the waiters await, but not even Jesus could have sat down to a plate. Reindeer was its name, and open for just twenty-three days it naturally it became the hottest ticket in town. This was 2006, it was Christmas, money was everywhere; Londoners were drunk on credit and wanted to spend it on experiences, prestige and uniqueness. No one, it's probably fair to say, remembers the food.
The idea was the brainchild of fashion designers turned restaurateurs Pablo Flack and David Waddington. Chef Tom Collins took care of the cooking. They followed this up in 2008 with Flash at the Royal Academy. This residency lasted three months and was a much calmer affair, even I was able to get a table for lunch. While I was there, I asked David, ‘Can food be art?’
‘I don't like the idea of food as art. It has a commercial end and its reason to exist is commercial, in that respect it's more akin to fashion. We have just arrived, we will disappear, we're an instillation, but I don't think we're art.’ Flash took more than a year of planning, and the result was a pastiche of a stately home dining room, replete with wood panelling, chandeliers and a deep thick carpet. The carpet was custom made and the use of huge wooden packaging crates around the room provided the feel of the panelling. From the ceiling hung the slowly revolving chandelier designed by Giles Deacon together with Swarovski, finaly the crockery was custom made by Wedgewood and decorated with designs by Will Broome.
Then in summer of 2009 Pierre Koffman 'popped up' on the roof of Selfridges after a five year absence from the capital; it was like the second coming.The beauty of pop ups is that you have all the buzz and media attention of an opening week and you don't have to maintain it. As one commentator said 'If you like it you can't go back – and if you hate it there's no point complaining'.
Looking back now, Reindeer was the restaurant equivalent of ‘Freeze’, the 1988 art exhibition that launched Young British Artists like Damien Hirst. It was a cultural happening whose shockwaves continued to be felt for years after the actual event. However, unlike Freeze, Reindeer caused a hundred flowers blossom. Using websites, social networking and mobile phones, food bloggers from Hackney to Hammersmith started copying the concept, adding a dash of the New York trend of supper clubs, where people cook for unknown guests in their own home. Some were good, others dreadful. Many got their fingers burned, metaphorically at least, by the experience of actually trying to cook for paying strangers. As anyone in the business will tell you, running a restaurant is a lot harder than it looks.
By the end of the decade some in the media, often the very people that were the shrillest at the beginning, were declaring the fad over; others however continued to host supper clubs and gatherings. Meanwhile the rest of us carried on the age old tradition of inviting our friends round for, you know, a chat and a bite to eat.
