The shape of things to come

Who knows what big Jim Larkin would have made of it. Two young chefs have turned his crowd-beseeching hands statue into a waiter holding plates aloft for their Dublin Supper Club logo. A supper club is something between a dinner party and a restaurant, a hybrid third space and I’m interested in what you might eat at one.

Tonight it’s a seven-course menu served by these two final year culinary arts students, Cuán Greene and Harry Colley. I am late, getting no answer to the doorbell of an apartment in the Docklands (turns out I’ve forgotten a zero) and finally announcing myself to the man who answers the intercom. These are three things that push me out of my comfort zone. Arriving anonymously into a busy restaurant, taking my seat and getting on with things, is how I like to do it.

Upstairs sofas have been pushed back to create a large dining room with a long narrow table running down its spine. Nosy types like me can scan the owners' bookshelves. There's a much niftier kitchen than I would expect in an apartment. And there's a familiar face beside my chair, Clare-Anne O'Keefe, cook and former MasterChef contestant.

Mingling is part of the mix. If talking to strangers isn’t your thing then supper clubs could be a circle of hell with canapes. Here guests are encouraged to bring one friend. The one-friend policy is to discourage people who know each other chatting together all night.

The apartment has a blackboard wall with the menu written in chalk down its middle. One course is called Umami. Another is called After Eight.

The aproned chefs and their helpers are doing serious-looking things in the kitchen and there’s a finger-sized crisp curl of something called poppadom on a beach stone covered in salt. It’s got a buttery yellow blob in one end and a white one in the other. We are told to eat it in a certain order but I’m sure it would have been delicious in the other direction as well.

Then the circus act begins. Slowly, over the course of a long, enjoyable evening these young men show us what they can do. There are clams in a tomato water jelly with fennel snow and wholegrain mustard. This one comes on on glass plate balanced on some chicken wire with carrageen and beach stones in one rolled-up end.

Our next “plat”e is a folded plastic scoop a little like a document folder holding creamy sauces, a tiny asparagus spear and a poached egg yolk that’s been magically put into an onion membrane (that annoying skin-like bit of the onion that you flick off your fingers when preparing an onion).

A teeny rose hip and Campari sorbet comes in a mini Ikea glass. Umami turns out to be a Swiss chard leaf, tomato, a ginger broth and a small round of beef shin that’s been so slowly cooked it virtually melts.

After Eight is a small hummock of mint cream that’s had a blizzard of grated chocolate over it, with shards of 80 per cent chocolate and a green minty blob of something between a juice and a jelly. The final dish is the only one that doesn’t work for me, an agar-set ball of apple and beet puree reformed to look like a beet, (only mine looks like a cherry tomato), with candied beets and apple served on a piece of bark. It’s an example of doing something because you can rather than doing it because it tastes delicious. But after six hits, I’m fine with a mediocre seventh.

At €35 a head each small dish has been €5, which counts as brilliant value considering the creativity and craft involved. The food and the conversation with strangers keeps me in my seat till after midnight. I meet a life coach, her truth-telling tech guy husband and two 20-something blokes who workshop us through the digital cattle mart that is the dating app Tinder.

I pay the hosts (restaurant-style) and collect my coat from a pile on the bed in the next room (dinner-party-style). All they’re missing is a sing-song.

Dinner for one came to €35. It's bring-your-own-wine, with €5 corkage.

Dublin Popup Supper Club,
tel: 087-1346281
Verdict: 8/10 Starry cooking; bistro prices
Facilities: Apartment loo
Music: None to be heard over the conversation
Food provenance: None
Wheelchair access: Depends on venue
Vegetarian options: Limited

OTHER SUPPER CLUBS
Kevin Powell and illustrator Robin Hoshino host News of the Curd three-course supper clubs (€25) every Wednesday in their Temple Bar apartment in Dublin. See newsofthecurd.com.

Katie Sanderson runs Living Dinners supper club nights in Dublin, putting the yum back into healthy food. See lovelivingdinners.com.

Aoife Ni Chochlain hosts seven-course dinners in her Dublin home for €35. Details at theopendoorsupperclub.blogspot.ie.

Seasons Supper Club, run by MasterChef contestants Brídín Carey, Conal Markey and Richard Speedie took a step back last year but they’re testing the waters for another dining club. See Facebook.com/SeasonsSupperClub.

Chef Ian Marconi, who runs streetfood company The Paella Guys, also stages Parlour Games, a supper club which this month hosted a four-course “spiced up Sunday Roast” meal for €39 a head. Bookings, parlourgames.ie