Mike & Ollie's Supper Club - SE14

Unfortunately (or fortunately really) I was so intent on eating all the delicious food at Mike & Ollie's supper club on Wednesday night that I didn't take any photos other than this rather lovely snap of my friend Amelia with the first thing on offer, an amazing frozen strawberry daiquiri (which looked pretty and went down a treat).  This was actually my first ever supper club so I really had no idea what to expect but thought it might be quite awkward, eating at a fold up card table in someone's living room.  How wrong I was - Mike & Ollie's is held in a cool warehousey style apartment in SE14 (New Cross) and the room had two large trestle-type tables, each with 12 people on them and an ingenious method of sliding the food down the centre of the long tables on wheeled planks, negating the need to reach over and deliver the food to each person.  My attendance was all thanks to my friend Gen who booked it all.  The food kept on coming after the daiquiri - we started with a scrumptious (I am totally going to run out of adjectives in this post) small portion of pork belly, with perfect crackling and some sort of stewed rhubarb on top.  As Amelia is a veggo, Ben and I split her portion (bonus!).  This was followed by steaming bowls of mussels with chorizo and broad beans which were also super tasty.  We then had a cute apple sorbet palate cleanser served in a hollowed out apple and followed up with delicious new season asparagus with two buttery dips, one flavoured with anchovy.  Picking up warm, sweet asparagus spears (as a side bar - if any of you have seen the Aussie original version of Kath & Kim you may remember Kim on E saying she was Britney Spears' sister "Asparagus Spears"...one of the all time best comedic scenes ever) and dipping them in savoury butter, then shoving them down your gullet is not only delicious but feels kinda dirty...in a good way....but then maybe that's just me....  Anyway - by this time we were pretty full (especially  young Ben and I, having had extra pork) but we wolfed down the scallop dish (served in the shell) although I have no memory of exactly how they were cooked, just that they were tasty.  We had also by this time downed a couple of bottles of wine and were happily chatting away to our neighbours who, it turned out, made cakes to sell at music festivals - nice job right?  The only slightly bum note in what was a night of amazing food was dessert - lovely strawberries and sort of a creamy, custardy substance (which I liked) but served on a weird, hard biscuity thing which Amelia said reminded her of a ryvita.  However let's not dwell on that because the food at Mike & Ollie's was seriously good  - it would actually be incorrect to say restaurant standard because this was way better than a lot of restaurants, I would happily have paid more than the £35 a head for what was a brilliant five course meal with sorbet and daiquiri (wine was extra).  Mike (who presided over our table and was remarkably calm given how many hungry foodies he was serving) & Ollie have a stall at the wonderful Brockley Market (check out their website here - if you are in the market for some food porn, this is a good place to start your surfing).  There are some upcoming dates for June - you can book on their website here.  I am now not only a big Mike & Ollie fan but also love the whole supper club vibe (I know, I know - I am late to the party) - my only worry is that my first supper club has set the bar waaaay high.