Читать книгу Supper Club: Recipes and notes from the underground restaurant - Kerstin Rodgers - Страница 16

How to Start Your Own Underground Restaurant

If you are a keen cook, a foodie or a traveller, you will probably, at some point, have dreamed about opening your own restaurant or café. People put their life savings into setting up a restaurant, but the reality is that around a third of all restaurants close within the first year. The long hours and small profit margins are tougher than you could ever imagine.

On the other hand, you may never have wanted a professional restaurant but simply adore cooking.

Or perhaps you are sick of inviting people to dinner, always being the host, spending a small fortune and never being invited back?

This chapter is for all of you…

So before you spend your money on buying a lease, hiring staff and equipping a professional kitchen, why not rehearse by starting a supper club? The main qualities you will need are friendliness, trust in others, faith, hospitality and a certain amount of bravery.

First of all, just do it. Go on, play restaurants. Take the plunge. It may even cure you of any urge to open a restaurant. I’m not going to hide the fact that it is a lot of work, you won’t make much money, you may even make a loss, but hell, it’s great fun. And believe me, you will never again go to a conventional restaurant with the same attitude. Suddenly all will become apparent: the mistakes, the cover-ups, the pressure and the sheer bloody slog of making food for large amounts of strangers.

Starting a supper club requires different rules to opening a restaurant. As a new phenomenon, the parameters are changing all the time. I will give you the benefit both of my experience and of the expertise of other underground restaurateurs.

So here is the 12-step programme:

1 LETTING PEOPLE KNOW................

Most guides on how to start your own restaurant focus on things like making sure your restaurant is in a good location and is obvious from the street, with effective ‘signage’. You don’t have that problem. The harder it is to find your supper club, the more obscure the location, the better. You will have no business from the street. Your clientele will come from word of mouth or word of mouse!

First of all, announce it. Tell your friends and family, and their friends and families. But you also want strangers, don’t you? Otherwise it’s just a dinner party with your mates. So you need to know how to pull in strangers. (Sounds like L’Auberge Rouge, a kind of hoteliers’ Sweeney Todd, doesn’t it?)

New media is your friend. Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Craigslist, Gumtree, Ning, these are all great methods for spreading the word. Start a Facebook group, set up a Twitter account, write a blog. By the time this book comes out there is bound to be some new fashionable social-media method, so find out what it is and use it. Age is no barrier to this: most of these media are user-friendly. Lynn Hill, who started the My Secret Tea Room near Leeds, is in her 60s and adept at making connections with new media.

But don’t forget old media: once you’ve found your feet, let your local newspaper know. You could even put ads up in newsagents and shops. (Sheen supper club did this, got a few snooty remarks but soon filled up with locals.) If you have a particular theme – say, organic seasonal food – then put up a little notice in your nearest organic produce shop.

Get cards printed; I get mine from MOO.com via Flickr. Easy-to-design, small and attractive. Personal marketing: every time you go out, take your cards with you, hand them out, explain your new venture. You could also get brochures done. Flypost, as if for a gig. All this is basic marketing and PR. You want to fill your places. Bums on seats.

Choose a name that is emblematic of your living-room restaurant. Most supper clubs use words like hidden, secret, underground or midnight in their name. This gives an indication of the clandestine and guerilla nature of the operation. Sometimes they call it after the location, such as The Shed or Ahoy there! (on a boat), or the menu served, like The Bruncheon club.

Best not to call the press until you’ve set foot in the kitchen. Go for a soft opening and practise your mistakes in private. (As one of the first, I did not have this advantage. The Guardian and several food bloggers insisted on coming for the first night even though I had explained that I probably wasn’t ready. It really added to the pressure. I had not foreseen the level of interest that my home restaurant would trigger.) However, it has not been PR expertise that got me publicity and renown: I’ve been making it all up as I go along, but I was excited about it, and that enthusiasm conveys itself to others…

It’s also a good idea to do some research. Go and visit other supper clubs. Read up on them if you are too far away to visit. Volunteer to help out for a night or two. I get e-mails all the time asking to work. Lady Grey of the Hidden Tea Room in London offered to take me to lunch to pick my brains. Feeding a cook is a perfect method of extracting information. You will soon work out what tricks and techniques you want to retain and which do not suit you. When I started, there were no others to check out. Now there are…so use them!

2 TAKING BOOKINGS................

Once you have people booking, you will need to work out a method for handling their enquiries. Do be courteous and answer all their e-mails within, say, a 24-hour period. If they have paid all or a portion up-front, remember that they don’t know you. If you don’t reply, they will get anxious, especially if you haven’t given them the address yet. I went to a supper club in Brighton that didn’t give me the address until the morning of the dinner. Anything could have happened, my e-mail could have gone down, I could have been staying the night elsewhere.

Another underground restaurateur didn’t give the address, only literary clues. It turned out she had a blue plaque of a well-known poet on the wall of her house. You could do a treasure hunt of clues, but while a little mystery is quite a good thing, don’t go over the top and exhaust your guests before they arrive!

So, bearing in mind that answering all these e-mails takes up a lot of time that you could be spending in the kitchen practising dishes, get yourself a system. Write a stock response, copy and paste it into each email. Have several replies ready:

1) I’m afraid we do not have space for that date blah blah but will put your name on a waiting list.

2) This is where to pay (bank details) or where to book tickets (web address).

3) Here is the address and time to come. How to get there, a map perhaps or transport directions. You may want to give them a phone number. But be wary of this unless you have someone to answer the phone for you. There’s nothing more annoying than last-minute phone calls from people who think nothing of pestering you endlessly with questions and requests for step-by-step directions to your doorstep. I’ve actually lost friends at my own parties by snarling at them when they called wanting to discuss their love lives, what they should wear etc., just as you are trying to organise everything and get your own make-up on.

4) Any house rules or information you might want to give.

5) Menus. I change them every week and post it up on my blog or on my Facebook group. But they are subject to change; the lack of choice is part of the appeal. You will eat what Mummy tells you!

At the beginning I would have, say, a group of four people booking and each of them would e-mail me twice. That’s eight e-mails for one group. Your head starts to explode and it can be a struggle to stay polite. Early on I had one guest who called me when I was in the bath. I tried to sound professional but he could hear the splashing. Eventually I confessed, ‘Well, this is a home restaurant, it’s not every day you get the chef taking reservations from his bath!’

If you have done a few dinners and want to continue, consider signing up with a ticket agency who will take the pressure off you and answer those e-mails. You will still get e-mails...from, say, people informing you of food allergies or birthdays, but not as many.

I forgot to give my address to one couple. My dinners start at 7.30 p.m. I was cooking all afternoon, but at 8 p.m. I just happened to check my e-mails. There were several desperate messages saying, ‘We’ve booked babysitting and we don’t know where you are! Please please call.’ I felt terrible. They did get here in the end and were rightly given a free bottle of wine.

So a website handling all that is rather a good idea. Unless you’ve got a huge amount of elves working for you for free.

3 PAYMENT.........................

Are you going to allow people to pay on the night? In cash? I knocked that idea on the head after the first week.

I had sold 15 places, the last two places booked only that afternoon. I was turning other people away. The last two people did not turn up! They had got drunk and could not be bothered. A supper club has no walk-in traffic. You need everybody to attend and pay. Profit margins, especially at the beginning, are so tight that you will, as I did, make a loss.

I had already spent the money on ingredients and increased the amount that I was cooking. Straight away I realised I needed a system of prepayment, or I would be losing money every week. One week, Horton Jupiter had ten no-shows. You can’t afford that. Nor do you want to live on the same leftovers for the rest of the week.

It’s not only the money: empty tables and spaces look bad, especially if it’s supposed to be a large mixed table and some people haven’t turned up.

Now in the confirmation e-mail I say: ‘Treat this like an invitation to a friend’s dinner party. If you can’t come, at least let the hostess know.’

So my advice is to at least take a deposit, if not to get them to pay the full amount beforehand. You can go two routes with this: they can pay directly into your bank account, in which case you are revealing your name and address. If you do not want to do that, they can pay via Paypal or a ticket seller. I started with Paypal, but I still had to respond to e-mails and their customer service is abroad. Also, let’s face it, it is a multi-national company, and part of the underground-restaurant movement’s ethos is that you are sticking it to The Man. Why sign up with a globalised corporation? It’s everything we are against.

I went with a British ticket seller: wegottickets.com. They charge ten per cent on top, to the customer not to you. There are other ticket sellers too, like brownpaper tickets, but I haven’t tried them.

You have to remember that this is still a new thing for many people. They can be quite nervous about coming and need reassurance. A ticket agency is, hopefully, reputable and gives the added guarantee that should something go wrong, the customers have a third party to complain to, get their money back from.

A good ticket agency will quickly deal with e-mails, bookings, and have English-speaking customer service. The only disadvantage is that, under British law, they will be the ones who have the mailing list, not you, and it’s an opt-in list. You need to build your mailing list for future events, so I suggest that you get a visitors’ book where people can write their comments, e-mail addresses and Twitter IDs. Or come to an arrangement with the ticket seller.

DECIDE YOUR PRICE.........................

Find out what local conventional restaurants are charging. That’s a good guideline.

While many people expect to pay less at a home restaurant – after all, you are not paying business rates and rents – at the same time you are not getting the bulk discounts and trade prices that conventional restaurants benefit from. Also, if they don’t sell a dish one night, they can sometimes sell it the next.

But remember that you are offering a unique experience that restaurants cannot offer. Don’t undersell yourself. It’s a tough balance.

Work out what you are comfortable with and stick to it. The rule is a third of your income should get used for expenditure on ingredients; a third on staff, laundry, equipment, utilities, bills, everything else; and the remaining third is profit. You probably won’t make a profit at first. In your anxiety to please, you may overspend on ingredients, buy new furniture and all sorts of equipment.

Decide on your policy about free places. I don’t give any free places except to my mother. My friends pay. The press pays. I can’t afford to give away free seats. I run a tiny little operation.

You could give discounts to friends if you like, or people could volunteer to work in exchange for dinner. I save places at cheaper rates for the unemployed. I do this for a couple of reasons: I’ve been a single mother for many years, living on very little money. I have a great deal of understanding of what it feels like to be left out of something because you simply can’t afford it. Plus I’m political, idealistic. I want the world to be a better place. That may sound mawkish but it’s true.

4 LOCATION................

As I said before, you have an advantage over a conventional restaurant. It doesn’t really matter where you are located. People are, in effect, ‘invited guests’ and you are not depending on footfall in the vicinity. In some ways, just like at the peak of the rave culture, the more obscure the location, the more exciting it is for the guests.

Are you going to have it in your home or a pop-up location? It’s easier logistically to have it at home, especially if the pop-up location doesn’t have a kitchen. You don’t have to transport all the cooking utensils, plates, silverware and ingredients to the new place.

There are plenty of locations to host pop-up restaurants: ask for the use of a café that is open only at lunchtimes and would be happy to get a little rent for the evenings, or one that is normally closed at weekends. Do a deal with a pub, ask to use their function room while they provide the drink. This would avoid licensing problems. Other ideas for locations: an art gallery, a squat, a loft, a boat, a factory, a garden or allotment if the weather is good.

Personally I prefer it in the home. Part of the excitement is the voyeurism of going into someone’s private space. I love looking at people’s houses.

It’s true however that this takes a certain amount of bravery; where you live, how you live, your cooking, perhaps even your family life, is exposed to public view and possibly public criticism. But, people are aware of that and are always – so far, in any case – very polite. To your face at least. Who knows what they say on the car ride home? But they don’t expect restaurant-level cooking and a spotless, luxury location. The kind of people who book will be adventurous, curious and flexible. They just want something authentic and some proper home cooking.

So, banishing any insecurities, think about your space, where you live, where people are going to eat. Play to its strengths...do you have a big balcony or garden? Have the drinks on the balcony, or use it for barbecue cooking. Is there something quirky or unusual about the design of your place? Do you have a large or particularly nice kitchen? Make sure you invite people to have a look.

Where are people going to eat? The likelihood is that your living room is the largest room. I had to move first one, then the other sofa into my bedroom, then the TV, then everything else. My bedroom, formerly a luxury boudoir, designed to ensnare men, now looks like a junkshop.

The look: part of the charm of a supper club is your personal style...whatever it may be. I lived for six years in Paris and one year in Provence (a cliché, but true) and I’ve been collecting vintage crockery and French kitchenalia for years, so that is part of my style, shabby chic Francophilia.

You may prefer a more modern and clean look. A friend of mine, originally from Zimbabwe, has only wooden crockery and bowls, much of it African. Her flat is like going into a little forest, full of birds’ nests and chunks of tree trunk.

If you haven’t got much money, you might go to Ikea, or your local second-hand and charity shops. Freecycle and eBay are also options for free/cheap furniture and crockery. I’ve been to squats where you drink out of jam jars rather than glasses, it was fun!

It’s about vaunting your style…you may love heavy, hand-made pottery, slate platters, silver cloches or Toby Jugs. Even if you have no style or very bad taste, that too can be part of the experience. If you are in a large city and there are several supper clubs, you will find that people will do the circuit, come around to see you all, and they want each one to be different.

The individuality of the place and the table settings is part of the appeal. The quirkiness, the individuality, the absence of corporate tableware, all this is key to the success of a home restaurant.

There are some supper clubs that imitate restaurants. You book a table for two, you don’t talk to other tables. You have imitation restaurant food. The portions are tiny, nouvelle-cuisine restaurant stylee. You aren’t invited into the kitchen and all signs of slovenly family life have been tucked away. The service is formal, even obsequious. The china matches, and has been bought especially for the occasion.

I don’t get it. This is our chance to muck about with the format. Frankly, if I feel like serving a dozen starters and no pud, or vice versa, well why not? Let’s play. Yes, one has to give some food, there has to be some kind of chef/dinner/guest equation, but let’s push it around a little. ‘Guests’ can help out, come into the kitchen, get their own water. They keep their cutlery between courses, just like in France. ‘Staff’ can sit down and chat. The hierarchy is horizontal. It’s anarchy, but in the true sense of the word: ‘an’ (Greek for ‘without’) ‘archy’ (a ruler). Not chaos.

Remember: you are not a proper restaurant; you don’t have to pretend to be one. At first you will probably try to ape a restaurant – after all, this is the model that we know. But afterwards, as you gain confidence, tear up the rulebook!

Work out how many tables and chairs you have. Borrow from neighbours and relatives. (I went to one supper club that was allowed to borrow neighbour’s chairs only until midnight! Like Cinderella we had to sit on the floor afterwards!) You could also buy some cheap fold-down ones, depending on the look you want. You can always paint them, add nice cushions. Chairs, crockery, glasses and cutlery do not have to match: mismatching is great if everything ‘shouts’ at the same volume.

If you don’t have enough chairs, and the guests live nearby or have a car, let them bring their own. (Two girls once brought their own chairs to my place, then went out partying later, carrying them to a nightclub. They told me it was very handy for sitting down in the club later, not to mention a great conversation starter.) I have also used piano stools, drum stools, boxes, dressing-table stools.

The tables you buy, borrow or retrieve from the garden will guide whether you put your guests on small tables with separate parties or large mixed tables.

As for the bathroom, label it and signpost it so that people know where to go. Make sure it’s clean. Always have enough loo paper. A clean towel to dry their hands is good. After several weeks during which I kept having to buy more ear buds, I realised they were being used by the guests! I think conventional restaurants are missing a trick by not providing them! You could really go to town and provide eau de cologne, hairspray and lipstick as they do in the bathrooms of New York nightclubs.

5 FOOD.........................

Obviously this is the most important element. The menu is at the heart of what you are creating.

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO COOK?.........................

The first few times, I’d stick to the dishes you are most comfortable with cooking. You will be nervous enough, you don’t want to cock up the cooking! Later on, you can let rip with the molecular experiments!

Leave enough time to prep, and for mistakes. In your anxious state, it’s amazing how dishes you’ve cooked perfectly a hundred times can go wrong. If you do decide to experiment, practise it first. Also remember that a dish that works wonderfully for 2–6 people is very different when you are doing it for double or more than that amount of people.

The secret of good food is: spend less time cooking and more time shopping! Unusual and seasonal ingredients, even just to garnish, can add that extra flair. This is what I do, but how you do it is up to you.

~ Cocktail with olives, pretzels or nuts ~

~ Starter ~

~ Home-made bread ~

~ Main course ~

~ Salad ~

~ Cheeseboard ~

~ Dessert ~

~ Coffee ~

(sometimes fresh mint tea, depending on the meal)

For £40 that’s not bad value. The point is, you can afford the whole experience. In conventional restaurants, a lot of mental arithmetic is involved, trying to figure out if you should share a starter, miss out pudding, have coffee at home. Those little bits really add up and that is how normal restaurants make their money, with the drink, the desserts and the coffees…in short, the extras. It can make dining a frustrating experience. Even when restaurants do fixed menus, frequently there are ‘supplements’ that are added on, generally for the dish you really want.

Other times I have done tapas or meze, up to 12 small courses.

SUPPLIERS AND INGREDIENTS.........................

So you’ve made a shopping list. But how much to buy? Another difficulty. In a conventional restaurant, what you don’t sell one night, you can sell the next. For an occasional supper club you have to get it right. Only experience can tell you that.

And where are you going to buy, say, 30 artichokes for your starters? They cost a fortune in the supermarket. Suppliers are the bane of most restaurants. Reliable suppliers are the most important element of any business. If you do have connections to professional chefs or kitchens, ask them who their suppliers are...and whether they mind adding on an order for you. You will get better deals and normally they deliver to your doorstep. That’s a huge relief when prepping can take up so much time, and you don’t want to be popping out to the shops every 5 minutes.

My local organic vegetable box scheme guy came to a dinner. He loved the concept and will now do me bulk prices. It does take a while to build these relationships but they are invaluable. Repay favours in kind, invite them to a dinner!

I do a mix of shopping between the local organic veg supplier and my local street markets. Going to a street market can be very inspirational when you are feeling a bit flat, a bit ‘What the hell shall I cook this week?’

Use good ingredients. Don’t skimp on quality. If your ingredients are good, you can’t go too far wrong. One supper club I read about didn’t cook anything. They just ordered great cheeses, hams, salamis, bread, salads, chutneys, smoked fish and set it out picnic-style.

If you or your friends have gardens or allotments, ask them to sell you their excess.

I do buy from large multi-national supermarkets sometimes. It’s convenient and they deliver, saving time for you. But I try not to do so. I feel this whole ‘movement’ is about circumventing large-scale corporations.

PLAN YOUR MENU.........................

Decide what kind of food, how many courses. When you know how many people you have coming, multiply whatever recipe you are doing to make that number of servings. Make a little extra. Many home restaurants do serve seconds, just like your mum would. Better to have more than less.

Think about your equipment in the context of your menu. Remember you have only a domestic kitchen. Plan your menu around your oven/cooker/fridge capacity. If you are doing three courses, have your menu balanced around hot and cold dishes. This relieves the pressure on your oven. So think it through. Maybe you want to start with a soup that can be made on the hob, a main that can be baked in the oven and a cold pudding.

A soup can also be prepared in advance and set aside; the salad won’t use up precious oven or hob space. Dessert can also be pre-prepped, made the day before.

Then prep. For your first meals, depending on how many people you have, give yourself two days. Make a ‘countdown’ of timings, what needs to be done first until last, and tick off tasks as you complete them. Obviously prep the stuff that stays less fresh last. Maybe part-cook some dishes and finish them off on the night.

Word of advice: don’t do pasta, unless it is baked, for more than eight people. It’s too hard to make it al dente for any more than that.

Yes, the food is important, but if they just want good food they can go to a conventional restaurant. What is essential is attention to detail, character, personality, intimacy, personal touches and…humour! You are really going to need that.

PORTION CONTROL.........................

This can be really hard to work out. Serve some dishes family-style. That is: a big plate in the middle for people to share. People love that, it encourages conversation.

Dishes that are plated-up obviously need to be more or less equal portions. I normally do this by eye, but you can also weigh them. Use one of those nifty digital scales on the counter and weigh each portion before putting it on a plate. This does slow things down but can be useful.

I always overestimate how much people want to eat. I have a morbid fear of people going home hungry, feeling ripped off. Once, a helper sent out very small portions of a starter. I took over and the rest of the starters were more generous. I didn’t know how to handle the situation with the poor diners that only had tiny portions, I was too embarrassed to take the plates back and put more food on them. Now I would go up to the diners and say that was a mistake, give me your plates back and I’ll put on some more! An underground restaurant doesn’t have to be a seamless operation. Mistakes are ok, they are even funny.

For plating up, you need a lot of counter space. If you haven’t got much space, use an ironing board, which is a nice long stretch to add to your counter length (make sure it’s steady), or even the floor if necessary. I’ve kept dishes needed for later covered on the floor in a corner.

Warm the plates if you can. I use an Aga and so I have the simmering oven for this, but you can also use the bottom of a conventional oven. This will keep the food warmer for longer, which is important if you have several tables. You don’t want the last few tables to get cold food.

Another trick about plating up is to have the plates that are ready to go out nearest to the door. It’s obvious I know, but it took me weeks to work that one out! In the panic, I often ended up doing it the wrong way around and the front-of-house would have to go around me to grab the plates.

SLOW FOOD.........................

I don’t ‘turn tables’. I believe in taking time over your food. I like a restaurant where you feel you could stay all night if you wanted. The table is yours for the night, as long as you want (within reason, although I have had people stay the night when they are too drunk to make their way home).

Send food out with short intervals, say 20–30 minutes between courses. In a normal restaurant it’s usually 15 minutes between courses, but there they want the table back. On the one hand you don’t want to rush people, on the other, you don’t want them sitting there twiddling their thumbs. The front-of-house should be able to gauge and tell the cook when people are ready for their next course, when their plates are empty and they are starting to get restless.

Now, this being a home restaurant and not necessarily a slick machine, sometimes there will be delays. Sometimes there’s pressure: one thing after another goes wrong. It can be true ‘seat of your pants’ stuff, guerrilla cookery, and there have been moments when I worried that I’d have to order take-out for all my guests. One supper-club host told guests that dessert had gone wrong and so they were all getting a packet of chocolate buttons each. Did the trick, people laughed, and who doesn’t like chocolate buttons?

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, I’m afraid I say no. I have only one teensy under-the-counter domestic fridge. I have enough problems fitting in my drink and food, I can’t chill their stuff too. At times, I’ve had to resort to asking neighbours if I can use their fridges. If you have the fridge space, great, but if not, be tough.

Just as people arrive: light the candles, pour out the initial cocktails, put on the music.

9 THE HOST.........................

One of the biggest assets of an Underground chef is personality. It really helps to be willing to share yourself. Be warm. Be funny. Be cheeky. Boss them about. Sometimes the guests need chivvying along. Remember, it’s your house. As I said before, sometimes you, as the host/ess, need to break the ice. Your guests are waiting for a lead from you. If the vibe is a bit chilly at first, pop out of the kitchen, make a joke. The atmosphere will change in the blink of an eye. It’s called hospitality for a reason.

So do go out and talk to people after the main course, when you can relax to a certain extent. If you are the chef, you can’t do that while you are cooking. Guests like to feel special. People love that personal touch. How often do they get to talk to the chef in a normal restaurant?

If you are feeling generous, go around with some cognac or dessert wine. This is a good opportunity to find out who has come to your house for the night. The kind of guests you have will probably be very interesting. Boring people don’t go to underground restaurants.

Part of being a host is expressing and sharing your interests with your guests. It might be great art or photography on your walls. As my training is a background in photography and travel, my living room has 40 large black-and-white photographs of my travels.

A tip: I’m sure you’ve had dinner parties where you’ve spent so long concentrating on the food that you end up opening the door to your guests in your dressing gown with no make-up and scraggy hair. So...get ready in the morning. I put on make-up, shower and wear something nice covered with an apron, so that if I run out of time, I still look ok. Then you can always just touch up your lipstick and spray on a bit of perfume to hide the cooking smells if you run out of time.

10 GUESTS.........................

My guests come from the internet, they are mostly strangers. Some hosts set rules, such as you must write in with a little biography, give some indication of what you are about, who you are. Other hosts allow only friends and friends of friends to attend. You can do what you feel comfortable with. I’ve never yet had a problem with any of my guests. It can be a little startling for them to sit at a table of strangers, but usually the food and drink and strangeness of being in someone’s living room binds them together. As I’ve mentioned, I also do themes: quizzes, a Marmite menu, an umami menu, an Elvis night. This gives guests something to talk about.

It does help if guests ‘get it’ and are willing to throw themselves into the unconventional spirit of underground restaurants. It’s difficult when they behave as if they are in a normal restaurant and expect staff to be at their beck and call.

One difficulty you need to be prepared for is guests and their ‘allergies’. Allergies are on the rise and, frankly, are the bane of every cook’s life, especially if, as in my case, you do a fixed menu. Of course, anybody in hospitality would want to cater for a genuine food allergy, but you’d be amazed at how many people ‘upgrade’ an aversion to a full-blown allergy in restaurants. Short of demanding that your guest has a blood test on the spot to determine a positive IgE antibody reading, the cook is in a helpless position to rebut these claims.