Rise Of The Food Pop-ups

Intimate pop-ups are a growing trend on Mumbai’s food circuit. Besides the pleasure of enjoying the culinary experience, it also provides the opportunity to interact with interesting new people.

- Meghna Panwar

THE BEST MEALS COME peppered with stories: the inside joke, the untold anecdote, the childhood memory. Mumbai-based travel writer Shirin Mehrotra and Mangaluru chef Shriya Shetty are trying to ensure that the best dishes come with stories, too. A chance meeting between the two gave birth to The Literary Table, a pop-up dinner service with books as its theme. “The idea is to get book lovers together over good food. The food, of course, is inspired from a book,” says Mehrotra.

Not long ago, the duo hosted a Harry Potter-inspired dinner, which they called #MugglesFeast. “Professor Snape is a very bitter character throughout the book,” says Shetty. “I wanted to translate that onto my plate. The only ingredient that came to my mind was karela.” With a goal to “play with the emotions of the food,” they whipped up a karela tart, which was then paired with a rum-based cocktail, infused with rosella flowers, thyme and topped with soda “inspired by Lily Potter.” Mehrotra says, “A cocktail which was my favourite was the colour-changing cocktail that was inspired from [Nymphadora] Tonks’s character.” (Tonks’s hair colour keeps changing in the series.)