Instagram pop-ups: Every takeout meal an adventure
Though it’s still great for sharing videos with friends, “Instagram has become one of my favorite takeout menus,” said Tejal Rao in The New York Times. Across the country, chefs who were thrown out of work by Covid have been dreaming up menu themes, cooking out of homes or borrowed spaces, and spreading word via Instagram to customers eager to try something new. The operations generally are not regulated by health departments, but the payoff is a more personal experience: plump Russian pelmeni made in Jessica and Trina Quinn’s Brooklyn apartment, perhaps, or Japanese yams braised in soy sauce from Jihee Kim’s makeshift space in Los Angeles’ Koreatown. “The setup may be scrappy,” but Kim’s food is “delicious, beautifully presented, and travels well, and it’s a thrill to have access to it every week.”
If you want to be part of the adventure, “embrace chaos,” said Soleil Ho in the San Francisco Chronicle. Fans of pop-up dining create complicated calendar notices and alarms to help them remember brief ordering windows. They learn to order by texts and Instagram or Facebook DMs and to remember that this week’s pickup location might be different from last week’s. I’ve gotten used to dragging friends to sketchy addresses and having to assure them we won’t be murdered—even though I’m unsure myself. “Maybe we’re walking into a trap, and my tombstone will read, ‘I was told there would be focaccia.’” Still, “some of the most exciting and novel experiments in food are happening at pop-ups,” and maybe it’s time we consumers worked as hard as the people serving us. “Not everything has to be easy or even comfortable. Sometimes, that’s the fun part.”