Fodder | A six-month sustainable food pop up in Brixton
Fodder is a pop up restaurant whose watchword is sustainability, and they’re going to be sustaining themselves in Brixton cocktail bar The Shrub & Shutter for the next six months.
It’s headed up by chef Michael Thompson, whose pretty impressive CV includes stints at places like Pollen Street Social and Cub. For this particular enterprise, he’s specifically focusing on creating an environmentally aware menu of seasonal & sustainable food, paying close attention to the producers who create it (even extending to the people who make the ceramics they serve the food on) particularly those who are “growing unusual things in interesting ways”.
They’ve set up shop in Brixton cocktail spot The Shrub & Shutter, whose bar space resembles more of a cocktail kitchen than anything else, with white tile walls haphazardly lined with tools, tinctures, glassware, ingredients, and the occasional taxidermied animal. Behind it, there’s a simple dining area bathed in the glow from the skylights that punctuate the ceiling.
The menu is set to change “almost daily” according to what those producers have managed to pull out of the earth that week, but will include the likes of Dan Barber’s Experimental Cucumbers (they’re extra-green, and more flavoursome) with lemon verbena & sancho peppers; confit rabbit gyoza with anise hyssop (it’s a fragrant, mint-like herb); and hay-smoked mussels with hispi cabbage & beer sauce.
Of course, The Shrub & Shutter will be taking care of the drinks, and supplying some equally inventive cocktails including ingredients like smoked okra, pickled blueberry, poppy liqueur, and birch sap. And if nothing takes your fancy? Just tell the barkeep three things you like, and they’ll whip up something you (hopefully) love. Just don’t overdo it…
…or things will get unsustainable, fast.
NOTE: Fodder’s pop up at The Shrub & Shutter has now closed – but you can keep an eye on what they’re up to next HERE.
The Shrub & Shutter | 336 Coldharbour Ln, Brixton, SW9 8QH
While you’re in Brixton… here are the neighbourhood’s best permanent restaurants.