Pop Pop Bang

The invite

A collaboration of art and food. My two favourite things. This pop up restaurant by the Real Greek really upped the anti. The setting was the ground floor of creative Agency, Mother in Shoreditch, (where I work). The diners sat underneath spectacular lit up gigantic umbrellas, an art instillation by Thomas Brown and Anna Burns.

Downstairs at Mother

Thomas Brown and Anna Burn's Pop Pop Bang

The daily familiarity Mother being my place of work inevitably means I didn’t experience the wow factor as much as the other guests must have, but I’ll transport you back how I felt on my fist day. Once through the blacked out doors, visitors to Mother HQ in the Biscuit Building are confronted with an impossibly vast space that is as big wide as it is high, one wall is covered in silver graffiti and another with a huge Peter Blake. It is sparse in a pleasing way, the only furniture being 6 long red benched and tables that the Mother employees dot around for lunch. The office didn’t win top 10 in the UK for nothing.

Amazing T-shirt and ouzo and Mojito shots

The Real Greek’s head chef, Theodore Kyriakou cooked up a never ending feast of dishes, easing us in with an ouzo and fennel mojito shot. I hadn’t had ouzo since a holiday to Malia and memories of a week spent rampaging through the strip of night clubs came hurtling back. Better move onto the octopus topped dolma and feta and spinach filo canapés. They divided our group of 6, half thought the dolma too sweet and the other half thought the pastries slightly salty. This debate resulted in us eating about 6 each, just to make sure we were on the right side.

We sat down to tables decorated with sheets of paper that told stories of the special Greek ingredients. I like this foody trend of explaining minute details about the ingredients you are eating, and when presented like this, it was a great conversation starter too. I found out all about how octopus’ reproduce while tucking into my starter of cold roast vegatables. The artichoke hearts were a real hit.

Roast veg starter

The main course was young lamb casserol with an elephant bean sauce. The meat was unbelievably tender and the beans had a lovely hearty smoky flavour.

Main

When the chocolate mousse with mixed herb ice cream was brought to our table, it looked amazing. After further investigation, an artistic drizzle of what can only be described as a balsamic dressing, would have been better on a salad and similarly, the strong herby flavour of the ice cream, which I usually associate with lamb, tricked my taste buds into thinking I was eating a meaty sweet ice cream.

Pudding

Apart from the slightly odd pudding, The Real Greek’s and Thomas Brown and Anna Burn’s takeover of Mother was really good fun. It was a particulary wet windy night and I left wanting to shove my broken black umbrella in the bin and swap it for one of the fun umbrellas and a little bit of Greek sun. Please.

  

The Art

The Food