The dining room at Torafuku on Vancouver’s Main Street is full on this autumn evening, but the guests aren’t here for the restaurant’s regular pan-Asian menu. They’re enjoying a multicourse feast of dishes such as kerang jimbaran, a torch-seared oyster served with a spicy sambal; lawar Bali, a contemporary kalamansi-infused take on steak tartare; and mie goreng jawa, a classic Indonesian noodle updated with Hokkaido scallops. The vision of three local entrepreneurs, this pop-up dinner, dubbed Rasa, is bringing the flavours of Indonesia to Vancouver.
Rasa is just one of numerous such culinary events that have popped up in Vancouver in recent months. Restaurants such as Dachi and Livia host guest chef nights, while Carp Sushi + Bowl, a tiny Mount Pleasant Japanese eatery, regularly morphs into Chilitos, chef Alvaro Montes de Oca’s weekend Mexican brunch. Gastown’s Bar Tartare is part wine bar and part permanent pop-up, with a rotating schedule of guest chefs who helm the kitchen for a few days or weeks at a time.
Chef Akira finishing the plating of the beef rendang at Rasa. Photo by Kado Wicaksana.
Brent Thornton, the newly appointed head chef of Gaia House, the hospitality group that operates Nammos Estiatorio, Selene Aegean Bistro, and Ama raw bar, says he’s participated in more than 20 pop-up events. Designing a pop-up dinner allows him “to create a completely new menu without boundaries,” he says, beyond what he might be able to do in his day-to-day kitchen. He might source items that are difficult to procure on a regular basis or craft more intricate preparations than he and his team could easily execute for a nightly menu.
For Gaia House, Thornton is currently working on a new restaurant concept. At an upcoming pop-up dinner he’ll prepare at Kavita, chef Tushar Tondvalkar’s modern Indian restaurant, Thornton and his team will be testing dishes that may find their way onto the new restaurant’s menu, using the pop-up to gauge customer reaction.
A plate served at a Gaia House pop-up event.
Pop-ups allow for cross-marketing between restaurants as well. As Thornton explains, “my following is probably very different to those that would go to Kavita, so it could bring new people into the space.”
A pop-up event can also be an important networking tool for chefs. Typically hosted on nights when restaurants would otherwise close, they can be an opportunity for chefs such as Thornton to show off their work to other chefs or restaurant owners. “I’ll get a lot of industry friends coming in who wouldn’t get to come to my restaurant,” he explains. For his own career development, he notes, “it’s important that I continue to be out in the public.”
For the restaurant hosting the pop-up, the event can create a new revenue opportunity. Miki Ellis, co-owner of Dachi in the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood, recounts that when she and her business partner Stephen Whiteside opened Dachi in 2018, they feared that “every hour not open would be bleeding us, so we should work every single hour of every day.” Since that’s obviously not a sustainable solution for any business, she acknowledges, hosting pop-ups, which Dachi has been doing for several years, brings in business on days when the regular team isn’t working.
For a small business like Dachi, pop-ups provide a low-risk way of doing something special, both for the restaurant team and for its clients. For regular customers who attend a pop-up, Ellis says, “you get to roll over to your neighbourhood spot and have a completely different experience.”
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Some of their pop-ups have been partnerships with restaurants more established than Dachi, while for others, they were able to host up-and-coming chef friends who would benefit from additional exposure. They’ve done events with visiting chefs from Montreal, and this year, they’ve done collaborations with Gary’s, a local South Granville restaurant, which enabled both Dachi and Gary’s to cross-promote these pop-ups to their regular clientele.
For Kley Klemens, Akira Takaki, and Patrick Gani, three Indonesian-born Vancouverites, the opportunity to showcase the food and culture of their home country was the drive behind the recent Rasa pop-up, a multicourse Indonesian feast.
They wanted to create not just a meal but also an Indonesian experience, where every dish had a story, Klemens says. He, Takaki, and Gani each come from different regions of Indonesia, and all three brought different ideas to the Rasa menu, which Takaki, a sous chef at Torafuku, ultimately designed. Klemens, the co-creator of the Instagram and YouTube channel Jewkarta, handled the marketing, while Gani, founder of the Indonesian-influenced Blaze Café, took charge of the event’s operations and logistics.
The Rasa evening began with a Balinese dancer, and before each course, Klemens described the dishes, explaining both their roots in Indonesia and the more contemporary interpretations that Takaki created. Some guests at Rasa, which the team offered in two seatings, were familiar with Indonesian cuisine, while others, Klemens says, were looking to sample ingredients and preparations that were newer to them.
Es kolak pisang (dessert banana semifreddo and brulée with jackfruit compote) at Rasa. Photo by Kado Wicaksana.
The dish that generated the most buzz was Takaki’s modern reinvention of beef rendang, a classic braised beef dish. For Rasa, the chef prepared steak served with a “rendang jus,” bringing the dish’s traditional flavours to a new preparation.
Klemens, Takaki, and Gani are considering plans for future Indonesian-inspired dinners. “I’m very excited about the prospect of having a second event,” Klemens insists. “We want to keep introducing Indonesian cuisine to the people in Vancouver.”
Collaborations like those among the Rasa team or between chefs at different restaurants are a key factor in the success of a pop-up event. Dachi’s Ellis says, “The super successful ones are where everyone’s pitching in,” whether it’s for social media or other pre-event promotion, coming out of the kitchen during the event to engage with guests, or even putting together a custom playlist for the dinner.
With benefits to the participating chefs, the restaurant hosting the event, and the dining public, it’s no wonder that pop-ups have been taking place more regularly throughout Vancouver. Follow your favourite restaurants or chefs on social media to see where they might be popping up next.
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