We did it! We were the first Alpine chalet company to do a supper club in London

When our guests leave the chalets at the end of a week’s holiday we often hear them saying ‘I can’t believe we have to wait a whole year until we eat like that again’. So we thought we would do something different and give them a mid-year taste of AliKats cuisine! So we put on a “supper club” in London & as far as we are aware, we are the 1st Alpine chalet company to do so!

For those of you who don’t know, supper clubs have sprung up as a popular way of sharing food and experiences with strangers in the last 5-10 years. According to Wikipedia: “The term “Supper club” is enjoying a revival with slightly different meaning – generally a small underground club.. where guests eat from a restricted or set menu and are expected to fraternise with other guests whom they may not know…. In the UK ‘Underground Restaurants’ and ‘Supper Clubs’ have started to blossom, with reviews in leading newspapers such as The Times and The Guardian. They range across the UK but are mainly concentrated in London. These are advertised by word of mouth and on social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook.”

For us, this turned into being the biggest logistical challenge we have had since we started AliKats. We wanted to recreate the chalet experience which meant driving 1000km from Morzine to London in a minibus full of kitchen equipment, food, wine & children, most of which were in tact by the end of the journey! We were not able to get into the venue, The Social Pantry, until 5pm on the day of the event, which means we had to do all the prep in Kat’s sister’s kitchen in Stoke Newington and then drive it all through central London to be in Clapham for 5pm. We then undertook the equivalent of a 60-minute makeover to decorate the venue in the style of one of our chalets. Thankfully we had some amazing help, most notably from Will & Claire who worked in Ferme a Jules as chalet hosts last season, in front of house and Rob Wade, of Food, Wine & Company in the kitchen.

Kat had spent the last 2 months preparing for this so had done her usual job of meticulously planning everything from the timings of each of the courses to the a print-out of each person’s tasks on the night. As a result, the evening went incredibly smoothly and all of our guests left looking happy & well fed! Our guests for the evening were a combination of people who had stayed with us in the chalet previously plus friends of theirs who were new to the AliKats experience – it was lovely for us to see some familiar faces as well as meeting a few new ones. We’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who attended for making the journey so worth while – it was a lot of fun!

We are now back home having driven another 1000km in the other direction and all our thoughts now turn to the El Nino winter which seems to be imminently arriving judging by the snow we had last week!