Supper Club: Recipes and notes from the underground restaurant. Kerstin Rodgers
If the delay becomes obvious, then ’fess up, go out there and say ‘Sorry, waiting for the food to cook.’ Most people are understanding. If the delay is really bad, you could swap courses, serve something that’s ready, the salad, say. As a last resort you could get your front-of-house to go around with a bottle of wine, fill their glasses. Be open and humble about your mistakes, and all will be forgiven.
6 FRONT-OF-HOUSE.........................
If you haven’t got a partner in crime, then get help, ask for volunteers. Crazy it might sound, but people want to work for you for free! People love to join in and if you are a good cook, it’s like a free cooking lesson for your volunteer. It is also more companionable to have someone to bounce your ideas/mistakes off!
Typical conversation:
‘Not quite sure about this sauce/bread/dish. Think I’ll get away with it?’
Volunteer tastes.
‘Yeah. I like it. Maybe cut off the crack/funny colour/burnt bit, or cover with cream/bit of parsley/sauce.’
I also tell my ‘staff’, ‘Don’t take any shit from the guests. Be nice of course, but you are not a servant, you are not at their beck and call.’
In a home restaurant, the customer is not always right: I am.
Don’t have too many people in the kitchen. It confuses matters, takes up space, and can sometimes turn into a backstage party. Which might sound fun, but the focus is the diners, their enjoyment of the evening. In my experience, four people, including me, is enough: two for front-of-house and an assistant in the kitchen is perfect.
In an emergency, if your front-of-house can’t cope, is ill, or doesn’t turn up, get a guest from each table to come and serve their own table. This has happened to me. The guests really didn’t mind; in fact, they enjoyed it. So don’t be afraid to get the customers to pitch in. This informality, communality, is part of what distinguishes a home restaurant from a conventional restaurant. If they need water and you are too busy, let them get it themselves.
7 DRINK.........................
My advice is to give your guests a free drink when they enter. It breaks the ice if you have guests that don’t know each other. People are a little shy on arrival. It often takes a couple of drinks before you start hearing laughter. Generally by the main course, the room is buzzing. People have forgotten that they are in a stranger’s house.
A drink will relax them, encourage them to socialise, ease them into the experience.
But you, however, cannot drink. Oh maybe just one. NO MORE. Take it from me: you don’t want to be half-cut as you try organising a meal for upwards of ten people. You need to be alert, on the ball, and watching all your timings like a hawk. A slip up, too long a chat with a guest, and your mains are burnt. You can start drinking once the main course is out.
Now to the sticky subject of licensing laws: out of all the possibly illegal things you are doing with a home restaurant, the most illegal is the booze. You are supposed to have a personal licence and a premises licence. I’ve got a personal licence. I haven’t got a premises licence. It’s practically impossible to get a premises licence for a residence. So you are stuck.
This is what I’ve been told by a licensing officer: you can give drink away for free but you can’t include it in the price of the meal. You can’t sell it. If caught, you can go to prison for six months or be fined £20,000.
BYO (bring your own) is legal. You could charge a corkage fee. After all, it’s you that has to provide glasses and wash them, replace them when they break, and all that work and expense adds up. However, guests often don’t bring enough drink and you don’t want them coming and going to buy more. That would piss off your neighbours and create more work for you, endlessly answering the door bell. So emphasise that guests should bring enough drink, and have the address of a local off-licence.
At first, I sold wine via lottery ticket. This turned out to be illegal, as you need permission from your local council to hold a raffle. I’ve also linked up with a small wine supplier. People pay online for the wine beforehand, with a small mark-up going to me, and it’s delivered to The Underground Restaurant. That’s what rules are for, finding a way around them!
Another pop-up restaurant, ‘The Surreal Dinner Party’, gave away a free bottle of wine in exchange for an artwork…not sure if that makes it any more legal but it was fun, especially as the guests did their own artwork and swapped.
It goes without saying that I wouldn’t serve a minor, nor would I continue to serve somebody that has clearly had far too much to drink. But it’s risky. I may end up in prison.
Then I’ll start a supper club in prison ‘Goodfellas’ style. Dress code: stripy pyjamas. Menu: porridge.
8 ON THE NIGHT.........................
Have someone to welcome the guests. You can’t be in two places at once. After guests have had their initial drink and have sat down, I do a little announcement or introduction at the beginning of the meal.
I’m naturally a backstage person, as are most chefs. Quickly I learnt, after a few weeks at The Underground Restaurant, that it was essential to make my presence known front-of-house. Now I do a talk at the start of every meal. It makes sense. People are in your home, they want to meet the host. Going to somebody’s house to eat and never meeting the host/chef is as strange as getting in the back of a friend’s car, while they drive alone up front, feeling like a taxi driver. So describe the meal, the inspiration behind it, maybe give some information about the ingredients and a few house rules. This seems to start off the little ceremony somehow. Gets the ball rolling.
MUSIC.........................
The iPod, which doesn’t require too much attention, is great for continual playlists. This is a task I outsource to my teenager. If it’s a lunch, my teen makes a sunny ’60s playlist; for dinner she uses instrumental, ‘chillaxed’ music. For themed nights she has created specialist playlists: Midnight Feast had only songs with the word ‘black’ in the lyrics (which tended to be heavy metal!), for ‘Night of the Senses’ my teen actually composed a song on her laptop to represent the seascape. She also has playlists that are guided by the weather. It’s probably best to have fairly mellow music without lyrics so that people can talk to each other. I’ve also had living-room concerts by up-and-coming artists in exchange for food and drink. Mostly I don’t pay musicians, but I did hire an accordion player for Bastille Night to add to the French atmosphere of the evening.
TABLE SETTINGS.........................
Lay the tables. I always feel more relaxed once the tables are laid. Choosing the flowers, candles, tablecloths and napkins, vintage glasses and pretty salt and pepper is one of my favourite parts.
Write or print out menus for the guests, perhaps one per table, or write it on a blackboard (one pop-up restaurant used their children’s blackboard) or on a wall mirror with liquid chalk.
Chill the white wine or beer and soft drinks. If people want their own wine chilled,