At SupperClub Tube, customers dine in a car on the London Underground Victoria line.Manuel Vazquez
Contemporary success is measured in Instagram hits. It's not enough for a proposal to be good, it must be
Instagrammable
. It should provoke the urge to take out your cell phone and tell the world: “look where I am.” Dining inside a
vintage
London Underground Victoria line car, set up to be a mix between the Orient Express and a soup kitchen, certainly falls into that category.
Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum, the Victorian building that houses a former pumping station, is more than ten kilometers east of central London. Part of its permanent collection are two 1967
tube
cars (the tube, as the London Underground is popularly known). Businessman Nick Atkins understood six years ago that it could be more than just an attraction for tourists and locals. It was the ideal setting to expand their
supper club
business .
More information
Isamar, a great food house hidden for seven decades in the Madrid neighborhood of Pueblo Nuevo
A
supper club
—dinner club, in Spanish—is a temporary restaurant with a specific proposal. It can be in a home, in the premises of a market... or in a subway car.
“It's kind of like opening your house to diners. It is a social event in which people gather around food. You end up sitting at a table with other people you don't know, and share the menu, which is not open. The proposal corresponds to each chef,” explains Beatriz Maldonado.
Beatriz Maldonado is a Colombian who studied to be an electronic engineer, but succumbed to the seduction of cooking. Manuel Vazquez
“Bea,” as everyone calls her in the kitchen adjacent to the car, is a Colombian who studied to be an electronic engineer, but succumbed to the seduction of the kitchen. He studied culinary arts in Argentina, trained in Bogotá at the Astrid&Gaston school - the chain of Peruvian chef Gastón Acurio and his wife Astrid Gutsche -, worked in the United States and Chile, tried his own restaurant in Colombia and made the leap to London 14 years ago. She decided that her future lay in the most cosmopolitan city in Europe.
“It's an interesting mix. The
tube
is an icon of London popular culture. The fact of being able to serve Latin American cuisine in a
Victoria Line
car is the essence of London: the combination of cultures and ideas in a city where people are open to trying different things,” explains the chef, while keeping an eye on her two kitchen assistants, a Brazilian with a Chilean father and a Peruvian with an Ecuadorian father.
A continent in a subway car
Three nights a week—Thursday, Friday and Saturday—Maldonado offers diners a tour of Latin American cuisine, with a six-course tasting menu. The price is fixed and offers two options that adjust to the internal configuration of the old wagon. Half of the space is occupied by seats of two facing each other, allowing the intimacy of a table for two to four people. The other half are benches facing each other, with a hallway in the middle. It was the design chosen at the time by those responsible for the London Underground to allow more space for suitcases and standing travelers. There, in the central hallway, there is a long table with the capacity to seat 12 guests.
Aztec soup, with three types of corn: white, red and blue. Manuel Vazquez
It is the most fun part of the restaurant, if one is willing to share the experience with two English lawyers; a marriage composed of a French financier and a financier from the Belgian Congo; and a group of university boys and girls who have decided to go all out for one night. The kitchen with bustle and laughter, between photo and photo for Instagram, is enjoyed twice as much.
The first dish is an Aztec Soup, with blue, white and red corn in different textures. Toasted in tortilla strips or cooked, mixed with the unmistakable flavor of jalapeño and achiote, the first spoonful suddenly contains Mexico grouper. Next is a
quinoa
risotto (in Peru they call it
quinotto
), combined with a roasted squash, kale, and caramelized onion. A reckless mix that works and is not tiring, because the cereal is sweet and the portion is limited.
Ropa Vieja, sweet potato and rice with corn. Manuel Vazquez
“I mix all Latin American cuisines. There are Mexican, Peruvian, Colombian elements... I use the ideas, techniques and typical recipes of the continent, and I sometimes mix them with seasonal English ingredients," explains the chef, to justify that another of her proposals is a lamb with the unmistakable flavor of the English countryside, a roast potato and an exquisitely Peruvian ocopa sauce, in its combination of yellow chili, huacatay leaves and toasted peanuts. Before, however, he placed before the diners a mackerel ceviche whose tiger's milk had little to offer. envy the best restaurant in Lima.
“If people came because of the novelty of the subway car. The idea is to make them stay and come back for the culinary proposal, until they forget where they are,” says the cook, who goes back and forth from the kitchen to the car to chat with the diners and answer their questions.
Carimañola, stuffed with huancaína cheese and Cavolo Nero kale. Manuel Vazquez
And the trick works, because many of them end up more interested in showing their astonishment at what they just ate, or in planning a future trip to Mexico, Peru, Colombia or Ecuador, than in making jokes or comments about the curious place where they have been. finished dinner. That's what Instagram is for.
SupperClub Tube
Address:
Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum. South Access Rd. London E178AX
Hours:
Thursday to Saturday, from 7:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
Price:
Tasting menu: 67 pounds (78.40 euros approx.) for a shared table of up to 12 people; 73 pounds (85.50 euros approx.), for individual tables of two to four people.
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