Supper time in the city

Eating and socialising is a match made in heaven, and there are an infinite number of variations on this – picnics, barbeques, dinner-dates, Christmas dinners, dinner parties, and street-food tours.

Today, a new twist on an old concept – the supper club – has experienced a renaissance in London. In this vibrant scene, entrepreneurial cooks - from amateur to Michelin-star chefs - host smaller, ticketed events for foodies who fancy spending an evening eating with strangers as an alternative to drinking in bars and clubs. The trend took off after the pandemic, when socializing around food was effectively suspended. Since then, the scene has flourished, as a generation of young entrepreneurs have found a market for people seeking am alternative culinary experience.

Jack Redmayne (25) co-founded The Candid Club. "When you get into your twenties, you have you group of friends", he tells me. "And then, you have the places you go to – and it usually becomes the same pubs, restaurants and areas – and I think there is an ever-growing community of people in London who are seeking variation, a bit of excitement, and something different."

'Supper club' is an umbrella term, generally referring to any private, chef-hosted ticketed dinner event with set menus, hosted in rented-out restaurants spaces or in the homes of the chefs themselves. The label was first applied to dinner events that emerged in Beverly Hills, California in the 1930s during prohibition, and existed in a similar cultural space to the speakeasies of that era, conveying a sense of intimacy, secrecy and exclusivity.

The concept also has different twists in different parts of the world. Argentina, for example, is famous for its ‘Paladars’ or ‘restaurante de puertas cerradas’ (closed-door restaurants). These are ticketed dinner events, often operating unlicenced, and which don’t release the location (often the chef’s home) until the evening of the event.

London’s supper clubs vary in extravagance and complexity. “Eatertainment” – combining food with light entertainment – features across some of the most successful versions. D4100 (Dinner For 100), is a pizzeria Supper Club that hosts singles night for different ages groups (they have 20-30s, 30-40s and 40-50s versions). The nights include multiple rounds of seating to encourage mingling, as well as quizzes and prizes. The innovative concept blends a form of speed dating, pizza and entertainment.

D4100's (Dinner For 100) Instagram page

The Candid Club was started as a fashion-themed supper club. Its idea was to pair each meal with a fashion show, with models setting down plates. Jack had the idea on a visit to Florence. “I was visiting the Gucci museum”, he tells me, “and on the bottom floor there’s a restaurant. I was slightly shocked to see that they weren’t advertising any of the new collections of Gucci. I thought it could be a really interesting potential space for qualitative marketing – for example, dressing the staff in the new collections, or having fashion shows throughout the dining experience."

“It made me think that restaurants weren’t being used to their full potential. Everyone in a restaurant is seeking some kind of stimulation. So, I went to Kit with this very hypothetical idea, and he put it into something that was actually possible through pop-up events.”

While many upmarket versions exist, much of London’s supper club scene is created by young, enterprising cooks, who either don’t have the capital to invest in starting a food business, or don’t want to take the risk. The events will either be hosted at the chef’s homes, or a rented-out local space, such as coffee shops, restaurants or art galleries. Provided the tickets sell out, there are predictable margins for the night, making it virtually risk-free.

The Candid Club hosts a night at The Colombia hotel. Credit: Jack Redmayne

The Candid Club founders Jack Redmayne and Kit Paterson. Credit: Jack Redmayne

“My intention wasn’t for this to be a career path, or a commercial venture. I’m not doing it for anything other than getting people together.”

From Jen's Kitchen, hosted by Jen Dickson, puts on a night at Pipoca, Brixton. Credit: Patrick Hess

From Jen's Kitchen, hosted by Jen Dickson, puts on a night at Pipoca, Brixton. Credit: Patrick Hess

Jen Dickson hosts a supper club at Pipoca, Brixton. Credit: Patrick Hess

Gen Z - who are more health conscious, alcohol- sceptic, and less prone to clubbing, and have grown up with dating apps, social media, and remote-work - crave alternative modes of socializing. "I love the idea of bringing new people in and having a social space that was all about food and enjoying each others’ company,” says Jen Dickson who hosts the club From Jen’s Kitchen.

Her club began after she hosted a successful dinner at her local south London café Pipoca. “I came about organically”, she says. “I’ve always hosted friends and family for dinner, and always hosted a thanksgiving dinner – with my roots in the US. I realised I outgrew my flat and needed a new space to host people, so I asked my local café if I could hire, and they let me host here. Everyone loved it, so the owner asked me to run another event, and kind of spiralled from there.

From Jen's Kitchen - Instagram page

“So, I did it really out of love of bringing friends and family together over the table, and connecting over food.”

Jen currently works freelance in digital marketing as her day job. “My intention wasn’t for this to be a career path, or a commercial venture,” she says. “I’m not doing it for anything other than getting people together.” That being said, her project has opened doors - she now hosts ad-hoc private cheffing events too.

Many of these supper clubs also provide guests with a more affordable form of social dining. A study by Meaningful Vision – which provides data for the hospitality sector – found that restaurant and pub visits fell by 6.8% in 2025, and that the cost of eating out had risen by 2.6% - twice the pace of retail food and beverage inflation. A YouGov poll in October last year found that 38% of people surveyed said they were eating out less frequently than the previous year. Among those, 63% cited higher costs as the main reason.

Jack says: “We love eating out at restaurants, but whenever I’m in a restaurant, I don’t see many people in their twenties, because it feels like they’ve been priced out of restaurants. So we wanted to make going out for an evening affordable to young people.”

A similar story of price-creep in the capital can be told of alcohol. The recent news of the cost of a pint in London hitting an eye-watering £10 for the first time in some venues symbolised this trend. The rising costs in rent, bills, and alcohol stock - particularly after Rachel Reeves' increase in Alcohol Duties - are being passed on to consumers, who are feeling the hit.

So-called 'dating-app fatigue' has also arguably sparked a craving for more real-life platforms to seek out romantic opportunities. "I think people are increasingly being turned off by meeting people through apps, so this is another alternative to that," Jack says. "I’m pretty sure a lot of people have gotten together off the back of our events."

The London supper club culture arguably fits in with the emergence of run-clubs, singles events and platforms like Timeleft and MeetUp, which offer people new, organic formats for meeting strangers and forging new, spontaneous connections outside of the anonymity, anarchy and expense of the nightclub.

Naturally, Supper Clubs also leverage social media (which ironically is often thought as the culprit of social isolation and loneliness) to reach their audience. Jack’s business partner at The Candid Club is Kit Paterson, who had a large social media following as a chef-influencer, which he took with him when him and Jack started the Club.

Far from the ‘stay-at-home generation’ of serial scrollers they are often portrayed as, London’s Supper Club scene points towards Gen Z’s sociability, adventurousness, entrepreneurialism, conviviality and curiosity. And while there are weekly media headlines about a loneliness crisis, supper clubs exemplify society’s ability to create solutions, harnessing the power of tech, and supplying a real demand for meeting strangers, making friends, and exploring romantic opportunities. All within a curated and affordable culinary experience.