Short-term Restaurants Grab Headlines

 
Pop-up restaurant was coined originally to denote recession-busting dinner events - also referred to as ‘guerrilla dining' - which amateur chefs set up in their own homes and promoted via  word-of-mouth and social websites. But the past year has seen the term hijacked by UK foodservice professionals to describe short-run culinary promotions at temporary and often unusual menues. That has been the case with an 80-seat pop-up on the roof of the Selfridge's department store in London's Oxford Street (picture, above), featuring cuisine by Pierre Koffmann (picture, below left), former three-Michelin-starred chef patron of the La Tante Claire restaurant. Other foodservice notables whose names have been linked to pop-ups have been Gordon Ramsay (on the Millennium Eye carousel on London's South Bank (picture, below right), and veteran Swiss chef Anton Mosimann (with a riverside pop-up during a Thames regatta) . Many more short-lived gastro venues can be expected to pop up this Christmas, inspired in many cases by the Reindeer, a three week magnet since 2006 for trendsetters in a former brewery in restaurant mecca Brick Lane. A pop-up 70 cover caferestaurant is being operated for two months until the end of January 2010 at London's Royal Academy of Arts by Mourad Mazouz's Sketch restaurant. It serves breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea from a menu devised by top French chef Pierre Gagnaire and employs recycled cardboard seating and a temporary kitchen. Design was by Mark Lawson Bell, Sketch's artistic director. A trend website which covers pop-up restaurants and bars internationally is www.goodhunting.com