'Man Eating a Leg of Chicken' launches at Altogether Otherwise
The first act of Where the Light Gets In’s playful pop-up restaurant series, A Play in the City, has begun.
The four-act series will take place over the next four months, taking in residencies at Altogether Otherwise and KAMPUS that will see the WTLGI team explore the likes of bar snacks, fast food and full animal butchery with a conceptual artist’s eye. Imagine if someone submitted a takeaway shop for the Turner Prize and you’re in the right ballpark.
Act 1, entitled Man Eating a Leg of Chicken, sees the Stockport-based Michelin Green Star-holder take over NOMA’s hobby house and serve up their take on bar food, from oysters to crisp sandwiches, alongside a selection of wines from the WTLGI cellar.
Chef-owner Sam Buckley and sommelier Anna Frost spoke to David Adamson about playing with their food.
David (D): So, Where the Light Gets In is taking a four-month break while work is being done on the building. Did you ever consider just doing something a bit easier? Why go through all this effort?
Sam (S): (Laughs) When we last spoke you said, ‘everyone seems to be cooking like you are, what makes you so special?’ I don’t know, we care about food and where it comes from, that’s the main body of our work at the restaurant, so coming into the city there's so much scope to play and explore and turn people's heads and get people asking those same questions.
So really when you say it's an opportunity to have a bit of a break and just slow down, for me it was an opportunity to do something really different and something really exciting. It’s exploratory, it’s play; we’re playing.
D: Sometimes restaurants can be overly serious and slightly precious about themselves, it must be a nice change to be introducing an element of play and fun; that concepts don’t have to last, they’re just something to play with. Has that been quite liberating?
S: It is liberating, but it's funny because the team have put so much work in, there's so much planning going into each concept and then it’s gone before you know it. We're planning the next act now and I've been writing and researching a lot, reading about the birth of cities and urban civilization, and the birth of fast food in all kinds of historical texts, and then it's gone in four weeks. So it really has to be playful, it has to be like a maquette of a restaurant, rather than, you know, a full opening.
D: Anna, how did you decide what wines to include on the list?
A: We wanted to have a very easygoing selection. The price point we specifically wanted to be as low as we can for the quality of what you're paying. So by the glass starts at six pounds and the bottles start at 30 pounds, and you get really incredible stuff for that. It’s not a moneymaking process for us, it’s about representing those winemakers that we work with, many we know personally. They’re hand-picked not machine-picked grapes, therefore it’s hard farming work so the least we can do is make some effort.
Like with everything, if your main ingredient is good you can have good results. Like with cooking; if your flour, your oil, your butter are good you can create something of a better standard. So if your grapes are good handpicked ones you don't need to mess in the cellar, you don't need to add enzymes and modify the alcohol level, add colors and things like this, it just comes about organically.
Plus it's rare that you work with chefs, especially in a more fine dining setting, who care about wine. Usually the separation is pretty strict; sommeliers are sommeliers, front of house are front of house and chefs are in their own world. For us, a lot of our chefs learn about wine.
D: Finally, talk to me about the art direction of the place. I love these light boxes.
A: We have a creative director, Kat Wood, who is incredible. So she went and bought all these books, like old recipe books and things like that, and we just had a massive collaging session with the team. It was super fun. I'd never done it before so I was saying, ‘Am I doing it right? Is it great? Is it looking terrible?’ And then Kat did the selection, they all came together and it just worked so nicely.
D: You’re like a little troupe of travelling actors aren’t you? Rock up somewhere, build your set, put a show on then dismantle it and move on to somewhere else.
S: Yeah, like culinary troubadours. And it's good practice for the team, it’s really fun for them to be cooking in different styles. We're going to be flipping burgers in January so we’re talking about smash patties now, questioning what the burger is, so it's got a bit of our DNA to it. But for the moment we’re in the bar.
Where The Light Gets In: A Play in the City will be running until March 2025.
Act One: Man Eating a Leg of Chicken will be at Altogether Otherwise until 21 December.
For more information, including about workshops running as part of A Play in the City, visit the Where the Light Gets In website.
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