Underground restaurant
An underground restaurant, sometimes known as a supper club or closed door restaurant, is a social dining restaurant operated out of someone's home, generally bypassing local zoning and health-code regulations. They are usually advertised by word of mouth or unwanted advertising. Websites such as BonAppetour have been created to help people find and book these restaurants.[1]
Depending on the area's law, the establishments may be illegal although they have been around for decades.[2] They are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S.[3][4]
The attraction of the underground restaurant for the customer is the opportunity to sample new food, often at low cost outside the traditional restaurant experience,;[5] underground restaurants have been described as "anti-restaurants." For the host, the benefit is to make money and experiment with cooking without being required to invest in restaurant property. "It's literally like playing restaurant," one host told the San Francisco Chronicle, "You can create the event, and then it's over."[6]
As long ago as 2001 the Pemberton family returned from a vacation in Cuba where they discovered a dining phenomenon. “Casa Particulares”[7], were where tourists could go to sample ethnic cooking at reasonable prices. Arguably the very first underground restaurant in the UK and based on the Cuban model, Brovey Lair is situated at the back of the Pemberton's home in Ovington, a village to the west of Norwich, Norfolk. What makes their restaurant stand out from those who’ve followed the trend is its many accolades. In 2010 Brovey Lair won The Good Food Guide’s Best Fish Restaurant in Britain award and still holds top place as their top rated restaurant in Norfolk.[8]
Contents
Notable places
Argentina
- Casa SaltShaker - Buenos Aires[9]
Canada
- Charlie's Burgers - Toronto - ranked by Food and Wine Magazine as one of the top three "word of mouth" supper clubs on its list of “100 Best New Food and Drink Experiences in the World”.[10][11]
- No Fixed Address - Vancouver[9]
Hong Kong
France
- Jim Haynes' Supper Club - Paris[9] - considered the original supper club[12]
- New Friends Table - Paris[9]
United States
- Hush - Washington, D.C.[9]
- Midnight Brunch - New York City[9]
- Savor Charleston - Charleston, South Carolina[9]
- The FourCoursemen - Athens, Georgia[13]
See also
References
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Perlman, Dan. Mi casa, su cuenta, The Guardian, April 17, 2008.
- ↑ Smillie, Susan. Going underground, The Guardian, May 29, 2009.
- ↑ The Secret Feast, The Guardian, February 9, 2009.
- ↑ Sarah Schindler, Unpermitted Urban Agriculture: Transgressive Actions, Changing Norms, and the Local Food Movement, 2014 Wisconsin Law Review 369, available at http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2414016
- ↑ DeFao, Janine. Guerrilla Gourmet, San Francisco Chronicle, Jan 22, 2006.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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- ↑ 'Kitchen confidential: At this underground dinner party, cleaning your plate hurts so good', Maclean's, March 30, 2009.
- ↑ Toronto 'anti-restaurant' ranked third best new food experience by Food & Wine magazine | National Post
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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Further reading
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