....phi pilot nights, a picture diary

φ pilot supper club nights

Boy! That was not as simple as we had thought!! As probably everyone who's done something similar knows, preparing for a supper club night is not even close to what you have in mind when you set off on this adventure. Contrary to simply cooking for a group of your friends, hosting a supper club dinner is a performance: things have to happen at a certain time and they have to happen in the right way the first time, especially if you are hosting a supper club with entertainment, like us.

As we have stated before, φ is all about doing everything from raw ingredients: we kneaded the dough for our bread on Sunday morning; we bought the best-quality dry-aged sirloin we could find in London; the vegetables were hand-selected from Church Street Market on Saturday; the ice-cream was actually made from milk and eggs two days in advance. All recipes were our own and even our entertainer, Avgoustinos, played his own songs (for the first time!).

We welcomed our guests with homemade bread and two kinds of olive oil that foreshadowed the starter and main. The starter, a hot and numbing bean soup that had been slow-boiling for almost two days was our take on the traditional Greek fasolada, inspired by a Sichuan bean-based hotpot we love. The concept for our main was an inside-out stir-fry: our roast was injected with our beer-based marinade and slow-cooked to medium rare. We served it with caramelized onions with juniper, mash of potato and beetroot with a hint of wasabi, roasted seasonal British winter vegetables, and a simple crispy green salad to quietly refresh our guests. The dessert was our halva ice cream with pieces of halva, served on ice-cream cones (yes, we made those ourselves too) with two warm sesame biscuits for a gentle contrast of temperature. Finally, while Avgoustinos was playing his last songs, we served chocolate branches with chocolate covered mint leaves, and 'flowers' of rasberries with petals made out of chocolate covered orange peel.

the winter menu at φ

Cooking the fish we "caught" at Billingsgate!

Today we fished out of the freezer one of our wild caught sea breams and some scallops from our recent trip to Billingsgate and a few hours later dinner was served:

"The Hart & Fuggle" Experience

Irene is particularly peculiar about food and trying out with her this popup restaurant we heard so much about was surely going to be... an experience. Our first dining experience with her and Stefanos, her fiancé, was in Rome where we went on a carb-devouring frenzy for a few days and had her cringe in horror at the sights of Roman classics like Trippa alla Romana and Rigatoni con Pajata (a dish with small intestines of suckling lamb and ewe's milk cheese at Checchino dal 1887). But we digress..

We went to The Hart & Fuggle on Thursday, Nov 8 (they had a separate menu every day apparently), the venue this time was the Workshop Cafe in Farringdon. We arrived slightly late and in a state of distress which quickly evaporated when we were served a very refreshing variation of gin & tonic, with a stick of fresh rosemary in it, a nice touch.

...and some more pics from our b-market trip

φ hits the Billingsgate Fish Market

One Sunday afternoon, while at a pub with dear friends, we were introduced to Panos and realized to our surprise that we are not the only crazies who were considering getting up at 6am to go to the Billingsgate Fish Market, the largest fish market in the UK where fresh fish arrive from all over the place to meet the huge demand of the capital's restaurants. "We have to do it soon!" were our parting words that day. A few Fridays later we received a message from him inviting us to stock up on seafood the day after.

So it begins!!

It feels funny, but it looks like we're actually doing it! The first (pilot) Phi Supper Club will meet in the next month!! Pictures and menu to follow!