Turkish breakfast in a Mumbai suburb, Lebanese dessert in Gurugram, and matcha maple ice-cream in Chandigarh—food and travel enthusiasts across the country are opening their homes to strangers and serving multi-course menus that are often at par with popular restaurants, albeit in a cosy, intimate setting.
Over the last decade or so, home chefs have started hosting supper clubs, often introducing the foods of their community, with some taking it outside their home kitchens and doing pop-ups at restaurants. Now, there’s a new wave of home chefs bringing cuisines inspired from their international travels to their supper clubs.
Aparna Bhat, founder of The Traveling Thali, is known for her Turkish and Georgian breakfasts in Mumbai. “Food for me is a way to connect with an unfamiliar culture,” she says. Her pop-ups, started in 2022, follow a specific theme like the recent kahvalti or Turkish breakfast spread inspired by the menu of her favourite spot Mükellef Karaköy in Istanbul. The spread included a mushroom and eggplant pâté, lahmacun or Turkish/Kurdish flatbread, honey and homemade butter, stewed fresh and dry fruit, and menemen or scrambled eggs with tomatoes.
Bringing people together over food was the thought that made sisters-in-law Rukaiya Kanchwala and Ishita Desai start Around the Table in the former’s Bandra home in Mumbai in 2024. Their family-style meals are coupled with games or other ice-breakers. For their recent Mamma Mia-themed pop-up, they planned a singalong to Abba songs. The menu included Greek classics like spanakopita, a spinach pie; pastitsio or lamb bechamel pasta; and portokalopita, a Greek orange cake. The duo hosts six-seven pop-ups a month and the menu changes frequently. In the past they’ve hosted Mexican and Middle Eastern-inspired pop-ups.
Archit Agarwal, who started The LOST Table in 2024, says, “We are inspired by the food we eat on our travels and then create our own renditions by tweaking some flavours.” The menu ranges from Asian to Turkish and Lebanese, which he cooks and serves along with his partner Natasha Ratti Kapoor. At their recent pop-up, the duo rounded off a three-course meal of melon salad, Turkish chicken kofte and one-pot shawarma rice with namoura, a Lebanese semolina cake.
Another Gurugram-based couple Dhruv Kalra and Trang Nguyen serve food from Vietnam. Nguyen, whose family is from Hanoi, says, “Our menu is largely focused on the food cooked at my home. For instance, the pho noodle dish that people are usually familiar with is very different from how my mother makes it.” They also travel frequently to Vietnam and learn to cook rare dishes like the Southern Vietnamese bánh xèo, a type of crisp pancakes and banh khot, or mini cupcakes with a prawn in the centre. “We also do bun cha, or grilled pork or pork balls served with rice noodles along with a broth, vegetables and dipping sauce to bring in the street food vibe of Dong Xuan market near Hanoi’s old quarters,” she adds. The duo hosts once a month or every alternate weekend.
The average price per person for these experiences ranges from ₹1,500 to ₹4,000, and the details are usually announced on Instagram.
Cities like Chandigarh and Pune are catching up too on pop-ups and supper clubs. “I got fascinated with kimchi and everything-Korean while living in the US, and finally started hosting in 2023 in Pune,” says Pune-based Pranjali Baaké, and founder of 1kimchikimchi, who hosts pop-ups at home two-three times a month. Her family-style meals include tteokbokki or rice cakes, kimchi bokkeumbap, a kimchi fried rice with bacon, Korean fried chicken along with banchan, or small side dishes that include kimchi, pickled vegeta-bles and a meat dish. For her next pop-up in May, Baaké is planning a brunch with Korean pancakes and buns, boba tea and mango bingsu, a traditional dessert.
“We don’t have a lot of restaurants serving international cuisines in Chandigarh, and we wanted to bring that (experience) through our supper clubs,” says Samiksha Chaudhary, who founded Seré Supper Club with her childhood friend Taarini Gupta in 2024. While Gupta is a trained chef, for their Japanese menu, the duo collaborated with another friend Vishrut Kohli to put together a menu inspired by his multiple visits to Japan. The menu included ramen with a hearty mushroom broth cooked for six hours and yuzu lemon sponge with matcha maple ice cream.
It’s been more than two years since academic and home chef Amrita Bhattachaarya started her home pop-ups in Santiniketan, West Bengal. “I have been researching the foods of the Bengali diaspora with my filmmaker husband Amit Sen. In 2022, I travelled to Myanmar and learnt the cuisine from a local chef there,” says Bhattachaarya. Apart from Bengali fare, her menu includes lesser-known Burmese dishes like hilsa stew cooked with fish sauce, Karen-style pork roast, and mopheto, a black rice dumpling with coconut stuffing steamed in banana leaf.
While food is at the core, the experience extends to crockery, décor and playlists. “We have started hosting musical gigs where we collaborate with independent artists,” says Kanchwala. Bhat pairs her meals with a storytelling session. Baaké’s guests take a deep-dive into ingredients through touch, smell, taste.
So, what’s next? Kalra and Ngyuyen are on a hunt for a space for their first restaurant. Agarwal and Kapoor plan to start a spice-mix brand. And Bhattachaarya just wrapped up a pop-up in Kolkata, her first outside of her home in Santiniketan.
The LOST Table, Gurgaon
Price: ₹3000-3500
The Traveling Thali, Mumbai
Price: ₹1500-2000
Around The Table, Mumbai
Price: ₹3500-4000
Vietnam-ease Caphe, Gurgaon
Price: ₹3500
Sere Supper Club, Chandigarh & Gurugram
Price: ₹2500 approx.
1kimchikimchi, Pune
Price: ₹1200-1800
Handpicked by Amrita, Shantiniketan
Price: ₹2000-2500 approx.
Mahek Arora, Delhi
Price: ₹2500
Shirin Mehrotra is a Delhi-based food writer and researcher.