MONDAY CLUB
The Assembly Rooms, Shoreditch
2012
Monday Club was series of events at The Assembly in Shoreditch, at which guest speakers came to lecture on a given theme. These included 'Madness, 'Diets', 'The Internet' and 'Raw Nature'. We were asked to provide small bites and a cocktail to to be served between, and based on, the lectures.
Madness, February
A lecture was given by Will Self on the history of our perception of madness and how it relates to the geographical and social development of London. Our food was inspired by claustrophobia, addiction, lunacy, and Stendhal Syndrome ( a fear of art - in this case, Damien Hirst)
Bergamot mackerel in sardine cans, salmon roe, turnips.
Chocolate - ganache, cake and crumble
Lamb, beetroot, chard, carrots, rhubarb
Tom Collins, the gin shown the light of full moon
and fortified with botanicals.
The Internet, June
We crowd-sourced ideas for this menu on Twitter, choosing 'Spam', 'Cookies' and 'Bytes' for our dishes. We made our Spam with four pressed cuts of pork, cookies were downloaded from websites and printed on cookies, and a spoon held 'bits' of 8 different vegetables, making up a 'byte'
Pressed pork with gooseberries, parsley
Wholegrain cookies with 'cookies'
Samphire, beet, radish, tomato, fennel, cucumbers and carrots.
Raw Nature, September
Following a talk about the sounds of remote corners of the world by BBC natural history sound-recordist
Chris Watson, we served a menu of tartare, 'ceviche' and vegetables.
Roe deer tartare, egg yolk, garlic flowers, blackberries
Bream cured in chard pickle licquor, oxalis, buckler sorrel
Turnips and carrots with lovage, wild watercress and greek beach salt