Kerstin Rodgers - Supper Club - Recipes and notes from the underground restaurant

This display of ‘show and tell’ was fantastic. It was also a little weird, like an intervention or a 12-step programme entitled ‘Supper-club addicts anonymous’. People were participating, contributing and using the space and the occasion in an unusual way. There was a lot of love in the room.

I’ve cooked at anti-G8 camps, catering for ‘barrios’ of 250 activists using local ingredients and whatever ‘The Anarchist Teapot’ catering company got delivered. Our materials were dumpster-dived; once, needing an enormous spoon to stir a large pot, we used a cricket bat instead. I’ve cooked in Belgrade for the People’s Global Action conference. Ever fed 450 hungry Serbian trade unionists, German punks and French philosophers? I have.

I cooked at a co-operative vegan cafe in Hackney, whose principles are as strong as their customers are random. It is in Crackney after all. I cooked weekly at the appropriately acronymed R.A.G., the Radical Anthropology Group, an evening class of anthropologists who mostly discuss the moon, Stonehenge, periods and Marxist sex strikes in hunter-gatherer societies. I’ve cooked at festivals, in fields, while the rest of the staff were high on E and K. I’ve cooked in squats, one of which was in a swimming pool, where I lived with my boyfriend in a changing room. I’ve cooked cans of soup on my car engine, on the way to camping. I pulled mussels from the freezing Antarctic sea, having backpacked to a national park in Tierra Del Fuego carrying white wine and garlic in my pockets to make moules marinières. I’ve dug clams at low tide on the Ile de Ré to make a campfire Spaghetti Vongole. I’ve cooked from a tiny cramped ‘vis à vis’ apartment in Paris, on a two-ring camping gaz stove, watching my neighbour’s every movement, the routine of ‘metro, boulot, dodo’(train/work/sleep). I cooked for the fortieth birthday of a man that had just dumped me. Heartbroken, humiliated, I made sure that there was a great spread, for him and his new girlfriend. Cooking is therapy.

In the last two years, since I started The Underground Restaurant, so many things have happened. I’ve had problems with trademarks, my freeholder, and Warner Brothers (the latter because I hosted a Harry Potter-themed dinner serving Butterbeer).

All along, I have encouraged others to start up their own supper clubs, via a social-networking site (http://supperclubfangroup.ning.com/) where supper-club hosts can publicise their meals, chat to each other about problems, successes and suppliers. I’ve also recently started up a bakery from my house. There is a dearth of bakeries in the UK; every high street should have a good organic baker. The idea to start selling bread from my house came, again, from Latin America, when I stayed with a Chilean family after randomly meeting them at a countryside bus stop when I was travelling there. One morning, the man of the house started to bake bread, and I watched as he put a notice in his window, ‘Hay pan’ (There is bread). Gradually neighbours dropped by and bought hot buns from him.

‘I always make a larger batch when I bake, everybody does in the village, to sell to others,’ he told me.

It makes sense: your oven is heated, it doesn’t take much work to double or triple your recipe, plus you can earn a little money. In the old days in Britain, each street had a communal oven; people didn’t necessarily have their own. I have an Aga, a large and expensive bit of kit, which produces beautiful bread. My first attempt was nerve-wracking but very successful, although the notice in my window didn’t suffice – I had to go out on the street to collar passersby. I sold most of my bread, wrapped in brown paper, and met my neighbours. I’m assigning a regular day of the week to sell the bread now.

In 2010, I launched The Underground Farmers’ & Craft Market in my home and garden, a huge success with 40 stalls and 200 punters. The idea was to promote small businesses and local, urban and home-cooked food. As well as stalls, there were live cooking demonstrations: I showed how to bake focaccia, a porridge expert who had won a prize at The Golden Spurtle Championship showed how to make the perfect porridge, and an urban cheese maker from Peckham demonstrated how to make South-London Halloumi. We also had a cocktail bar on an ironing board and live music.

On another occasion, Marmite, manufacturers of my favourite spread, asked me to create recipes for Marmite cupcakes. They put my face on a jar of Marmite, a career highlight for me, the equivalent of winning a foodie Oscar! I was also asked to talk at the Women’s Institute and the Real Food Festival.

One question at the Women’s Institute did trip me up, however. A lady asked:

‘Do you mind it when other people use your toilet?’

For some reason I replied:

‘No. I’m not anal.’

I’m pretty sure this is the first time the word ‘anal’ has been used at a Women’s Institute lecture. And it’s true, I don’t mind when 200 strange bottoms use my loo. After all, I’ve been to India and Tibet.

A question people never ask: Why are you doing this?

Because I love to cook. Because I love to mother. Because I’m a feeder. Because I love to share. Because I like to be in control. Because I enjoy the potential for chaos. Because I’m lonely. Because I like to stir things up. Because I like causing trouble. Because I find it funny and it makes me laugh. Because I want to change things. Because it’s now my job, it’s my living. Because it makes me cook things I wouldn’t be bothered to try for just me and my daughter. Because I don’t have a big family. Because I love community. Because it’s fun to come up with an idea and make it happen. Because, although I love words, I like action even better.

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!