Macha Tea Company
Southeast Asian chicken with coconut rice and salad from Macha Tea.
After moving to Madison from the Koreatown neighborhood of Los Angeles last August, Hahri Shin noticed that Korean restaurants were relatively scarce in his new city. So to satisfy his craving and sharpen his culinary skills, he started hosting pop-up dinners at his apartment, calling it the Korean Supper Club.
The dinners started small — just Shin and a few friends who were curious about trying Korean food. But as he started chronicling his meals on Instagram and posting information about upcoming dinners, people outside his circle started getting interested. Now, he’s in talks with a local restaurant to do larger-scale pop-ups later this summer. “It’s really exciting for me to share and teach people what Korean food is,” Shin says.
His specialty is Korean fried chicken, and he has also become known for his Korean bone broth soups and barbecue spare ribs. He uses traditional recipes, but he also likes experimenting with local ingredients he finds at the Dane County Farmers’ Market. “It’s not necessarily fusion, but it comes out of being a Korean American in Wisconsin,” says Shin. His inventions include ramp kimchi, rice cakes with mozzarella and macaroni and cheese with kimchi, chorizo and bratwurst.
Shin is a self-taught cook, but he has deep ties to the industry — his parents ran a Japanese restaurant in Philadelphia, and he remembers spending his summers in the kitchen, peeling and prepping. “I always thought it was kind of funny that we didn’t cook Korean food,” he says. His day job is in health care technology, but he dreams of opening his own restaurant when he’s healthy enough to do it — he has end-stage renal disease, and until he can get a kidney transplant, he needs dialysis three times a week. (His blood type is O-positive, in case anybody wants to help him out).
“Pop-up dinners help me share my passion for food,” he says. “But I see myself committing to Madison and seeing where I can take this.”
As Madison’s reputation for great restaurants has grown, so has its pop-up dining scene. Events are happening all over town — bars, community centers, established restaurants — and experienced chefs as well as newcomers are getting involved. Advertised mainly on social media and by word of mouth, the events have an ephemeral, almost DIY quality to them that makes it fun for diners. And chefs enjoy pop-ups because they provide an opportunity for creativity and collaboration and are a low-stakes way to try out a new concept.
Hahri Shin (left) crafts an amuse from Kumamoto oyster, Santa Barbara uni, ikura and caviar.
Chad Vogel, owner of the Robin Room on East Johnson Street, hosted his first pop-up shortly after the bar opened two years ago — a taco night with the owners of El Grito. Since then, it’s become somewhat of a hot spot for culinary collaborations, regularly bringing in guest chefs a few times per week. “[Pop-ups are] another way for sous chefs and others to try out a concept and shop it around to see if it’s viable,” says Vogel, a former chef himself. “It’s something that can come and go as it needs to — people always like little snacks.”
Robin Room has a small kitchen used for preparing cocktail ingredients — juices, garnishes and so forth — but because all the prep work is done during the day, the kitchen is unused at night, Vogel says. The space is too small to be a restaurant, but it turned out to be perfect for pop-ups. “Once we started doing it, things were going really well,” he says. “And people started coming.”
While some pop-ups are one-offs, others are permanent. Since January, Mason Purtell and Lauralyn Rosenberger have been selling hand-pulled noodle dishes as LZ Noodles every Monday night at Underground Butcher, which they advertise on Instagram. Both got their start with UW-Madison’s Slow Food Cafe and are now cooks with Underground Food Collective, but Purtell’s inspiration for the pop-up came from a unique place — the movie Kung Fu Panda.
“There’s a special feature on the DVD where it shows you how to make hand-pulled noodles,” he says. From there, he took a leap and traveled to China, where he convinced a restaurant worker to teach him how to make the dish. Both Purtell and Rosenberger are in their early 20s, and though they dream of opening their own noodle shop someday, they don’t have the necessary funds yet.
“For us, it’s more accessible to do a pop-up,” Purtell says. “We can incubate our idea and play around with different techniques without putting any commitment into a lease or anything.”
Pop-ups can also foster cross-pollination within the local culinary scene. Rachel Verbrick, owner of Macha Tea Company, has hosted a number of pop-ups at her East Johnson Street space, and has popped up herself at Robin Room. “It’s easy because they’re right next door,” she says.
Primarily a tea retailer, Macha regularly serves food Friday through Sunday and is closed on Tuesdays, so pop-up dinners provide extra revenue — and a chance to experiment. “It’s fun to challenge yourself and do something outside what you’d normally do,” says Verbrick, who posts the events on Facebook and Instagram. “Especially for chefs in kitchens [with a set menu].”
Aida Ebrahimi
LZ Noodles combines beets, soft marinated eggs, microgreens and spicy peppers in a vegan broth.
There are downsides to pop-ups, though. In Verbrick’s case, she’s had prospective customers see photos of food from special events on social media, and then they come into the shop looking for a meal on a day when they aren’t serving food. “It is sort of challenging,” she says. “There can be a perception problem.”
Kelly Messori, founder of Big Mouth Pasta, has also taken a step back from doing “traditional” pop-ups — the kind that involve taking over another restaurant’s space for a special event. “We did that for a while, and it worked, and it’s a good concept, but now we’re focusing on events that are more mindful,” she says, adding that the hectic kitchen environment wasn’t the best fit for showcasing her homemade pasta dishes. “You have to work very fast, and you don’t get that home-cooked, handmade feel,” she says. “It feels like slinging pasta.”
She’s pivoted to a slightly different kind of event — make-and-take pasta classes held at Madison Sourdough Company, and a combination yoga class and three-course pasta dinner called Pastasana, slated for June 30 at Threshold on Atwood Avenue. She posts her events on Facebook. “We decided we want to do fresh pasta, but on our own terms,” Messori says. “Community, family, friends, yoga and pasta — we’re combining things that we love.”
James Juedes, co-owner of Casetta Kitchen, has also found success with more structured, reserve-ahead dinners, which he posts on Facebook and Instagram. His monthly events are unique in the pop-up scene in that he’s popping up in his own space, but it’s something special for the restaurant, primarily a breakfast and lunch spot.
“[Co-owner] Tommy Gering and I both come from more of a fine-dining background, and this is more of a creative outlet,” Juedes says. “It’s a chance to do something different with our guests and have a little bit of fun in the evenings.”
The dinners have proven popular — many guests have standing reservations, and the dinners typically sell out. The menu changes frequently but typically focuses on different regions of Italy.
Pop-up dinners at the Goodman Community Center have also been “wildly successful,” says organizer Jon Lica. The program began as a way to provide employment opportunities for Goodman Center youth during the winter months, and it’s blossomed into a beloved community event — and a talent pipeline connecting young people interested in culinary careers to local restaurants.
Chefs like Chris Myers of Cento, Daniel Bonanno of A Pig in a Fur Coat, and Jonny Hunter of Underground Food Collective work with teens to develop a menu and prepare the meal, which typically serves up to 200 people. “The kids are working side-by-side with some of the best chefs in Madison,” Lica says. “It’s a great introductory experience.”
The Goodman Center typically hosts three or four pop-ups during the winter. Information is posted to the Goodman Center website. It’s community-style dining, tickets are affordable at $15 for adults and $5 for kids, and all proceeds go back to the center’s Teen Works program. “Each one has sold out,” Lica says. “There’s just something fun about pop-up dinners.”