Читать книгу Supper Club: Recipes and notes from the underground restaurant - Kerstin Rodgers - Страница 12

Variety

There is a huge variety of styles of underground restaurant. Some operate weekly, some monthly, some just when they feel like it. The locations can vary from a council flat, a suburban semi, a bedsit, a château, a shed, a boat, a warehouse. Some underground restaurants can feed 50 people at a time; others are more intimate affairs of 6–10 people. I’ve even held private dinners for two in my garden shed!

The phenomenon is very site specific. Each underground restaurant is as individual as its host…and you have the freedom to fit it around your lifestyle. The style will depend on your space, even the amount of knives and forks you own…

David Clasen serves only 12 people because he happens to own just 12 place settings, three tables and a tiny kitchen. I have a large Victorian garden flat, so can fit up to 30 people at a time in my living room. When the weather is good, we can spill out into my garden and balcony. I host my evenings on a Saturday because my daughter is at school during the week and I felt it might be a little distracting for her to arrive home from school on a weekday faced with a horde of strangers in the living room.

Horton Jupiter can fit 10 people comfortably in his council-flat living room. Horton is in a band, ‘They came from the stars, I saw them…’ and therefore needs weekends off for gigs.

Artist Tony Hornecker’s extraordinary studio space, a little crooked house in the back streets of the East End (soon host to the 2012 Olympics, let’s really show the world how we entertain, eh?), displays his talents as a set designer. The food, although good, is almost secondary to the setting. He sits diners all over his house; couples can even book his bedroom!