Sunday Supper Club – Big Event for a Big Weekend

It’s not often that you will pass a driving test, have your last day at work, found a new flatmate, do your first supper club and witness the birth of your first niece over the course of one weekend... So you can imagine that last weekend was rather a special one.

The driving test proved the old adage third time lucky to be true and I’m now the proud aunt of one very cute niece Summer, whom I hope to influence in ways good and bad in the years to come. She’ll definitely have to put up with old aunty Julianna butting into her life fairly frequently, because after watching the closing stages of my sister’s labour, I’m fairly confident that I will not be running to do that anytime soon myself. The horror....

Moving swiftly on, the 19th of September proved to be a big day – not only was it the day Summer was born, but it was also the day I held my first not so secret Crumbs and Dirty Dishes Sunday Supper Club.

I’ve been toying with the idea of a supper club for a while... some of the most enjoyable nights out I’ve recently had have been eating in other people’s homes or random factories in Dalston (see Shacklewell Nights). And so, after dithering and dithering I bit the bullet, sent out the emails and started plotting the menu.

The experience proved to be a fun one... I can’t say that waking up at 9am in Dalston after a rather heavy party on Friday night and having to hare my way back to Brixton to do some market shopping pre-flat viewings was quite the way I would have planned it. Neither was waking up at 5am on the Sunday to start the cooking.

A call from my sister at 11am, just as everything was ticking along nicely to say that her labour had started kept things nice and spicy (especially as I was one of the birth partners) – the afternoon was punctuated by progress reports and I had fingers and toes crossed that I’d make it in time for the birth.

By the time people rolled into Brixton at two, we were merrily doling out the Bellinis and trying to stop ourselves scoffing the Brie, Pancetta and Mussel Tartlets that smelt so tempting in the oven.


These were followed by braised lamb shanks with parsnip gratin and wild mushroom gravy, which went down particularly well and the blackberry and clotted cream shortcake appeared to have found a few fans.

As someone who is frequently tormented by the choice between cheese or pudding (a choice between cheese and anything is always particularly unfair) I’d decided to serve both... the cheeseboard consisted of a ripe Brie, Cambozola, Dolcelatte, Cheddar, goat’s cheese and herbed Feta sourced from a new love, the Portuguese delicatessan under the Brixton railway arches.

But essentially a supper club is about the people. Our crowd was fantastic – so I’d like to say a big thank you to them and my very helpful sous-chef Natalie for making it such a special afternoon. And Nadine for the wonderful photos.



Dates for October/ November’s supper clubs are as follows:
10th October
7th November
28th November
Price: Twenty pounds including four courses and a welcome drink. BYO booze.
Email crumbsanddirtydishes@gmail.com to sign up or to be added to the email update list.