Beijing, China — After catching glimpses of popup cafes in California and New York via Twitter or blogs, I felt inspired to participate in one, but wondered how. Beijing Design Week offered that opportunity. Kupa Studio’s Raina Ho and Wang Wei set up Sky Light popup café in a dilapidated courtyard, propped up some tables, dragged in a fridge, invited some cooks, and we sold good eats!
We all brought food cooked or warmed in rice cookers! Who knew so much good food could come from a rice cooker?
Kin Hong, newbie to Beijing, made tacos that sent our taste buds back to taquerias in California. After finding tortillas produced by Bimbo bread, he used a rice bowl to cookie-cut the proper taqueria-sized tortillas from them. He served both carnitas and lengua.
Also on the menu were spring rolls from Susu Vietnamese restaurant, cakes from Arrow Factory’s bakery, bruschetta by Raina (who also makes her own sourdough bread), and sand ginger chicken by me.
I hope to see more of these events and collaborations in Beijing.
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- Closing time
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- Storytelling
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- Saturday’s popup cafe crew
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- Chozie digs the chicken (http://goo.gl/gtESQ)
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- Feeding Sufei (Anna Sophie) of http://www.sexybeijing.tv/
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- Chatting with Beijing neighbor Linus (http://heyrobics.com/)
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- Serving up sand ginger chicken
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- Unhappy Hipsters
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- Nels Frye of http://www.stylites.net/
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- Emery’s got a plate full of sand ginger chicken before flying home to Cali
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- Storytelling behind sand ginger chicken
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- Loading up more chicken into the press-play rice cooker!
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- First sand ginger chicken customer!
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- The best tacos in Beijing are by Kin Hong
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- Mmm… the aroma of sand ginger chicken!
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- Doing what we love pays off!
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- What shall we order?
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- The courtyard of the half-bombed out popup cafe
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- Chow time!
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- Just met, but silly to the bone already!
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- Rice cooker brigade
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- Kin Hong and Raina Ho serving up the best tacos in Beijing
Very proud of the first Show Shanti pop up, here is to many more and to the eventual opening of your own cafe/restaurant.
YUM. I am hungry and it is tough to find a meal here in the US without so many preservatives.
[...] with sand ginger chicken and he had one filled with braised beef lengua (tongue). Together we served up snacks in a popup cafe sheltered within a condemned courtyard structure at Beijing Design [...]