From 3-6 March 2016, Section33 took over Sammy Dow’s pub in Glasgow to host a pop-up restaurant featuring some amazing Scottish produce. We gave a bit of detail about what Section33 does in this post.
It was an all-out four days, but it was incredible.
It All Started Here was on coffee duties. We left the EK at home and took our custom Rancilio Classe 6 and Nuova Simonelli Clima Pro, along with our two Push/Palm tampers and some beautiful Inker cups from Machina Espresso:
Black and orange, black and orange. Didn’t Wiz Khalifa write a song about that?
We got a sneak peak at the menu a few weeks ago and had our suspicions the food would be good, but it was seriously good.
Knockraich Crowdie salad:
Venison / potato galette / parsnip / cabbage:
The venison was stunning. The haunch was so tender. The gravy and potato galette were perfect. One of the best plates of food I’ve had.
We wanted to try and ensure that food of such a high standard was given a good send off instead of the usual disappointment of after dinner coffee. We also wanted to do something slightly different, so enter our naturally processed Ethiopian friend, Foundry’s Rocko Mountain. It’s light, fruity, a bit boozy and slightly bonkers, which is why we love it. We did some tasting with the servers and everyone was surprised by it, with comments like “it’s so fruity” and “it doesn’t even taste like coffee”. Those moments when people realise the range of flavours in coffee are amazing to see.
Although it’s a fantastic coffee, I expected more people to not like the Rocko Mountain. Serving a coffee you don’t expect customers to like might seem weird, but if people are used to dark, bitter espresso after dinner then getting a fruit bomb might be a bit confounding. While diners are usually open to new food experiences, as Mads Kleppe from Noma states in this article, they tend to have more fixed expectations of what coffee is:
“Most of the people who come here are quite open-minded, but coffee is something that everybody has an opinion about. Luckily most people really enjoy it, but a lot of people get really provoked and upset because this is not how coffee tastes for them, it’s not how it looks and smells, and they have very strong ideas about how it should be…The people that want to have a strong espresso at the end of the meal are still going to be angry at us. It’s going to be light and fruity and acidic and delicious, and it’s not going to be served as hot as they want, but it’s still going to be great.”
Pretty much everyone loved it though – it was great to hear that people liked ‘different’ and were open to having new experiences. We’re all about new experiences!
And feedback on social media was very positive:
Read the full review from West End Daze
(Excuse the latte art on this one – I’m still finding my feet with skimmed milk.)
We had such good fun working with the Section guys, they have an amazing team and are so committed to great customer experiences. It was hard work but completely worth it. Can’t wait for the next one, but we need a wee break first!
If you’re interested in which tamper came out top between the Push and the Mahlgut, that post will be coming soon. Team IASH just need to catch up on some sleep first…
It All Started Here 