Take over the top-floor canteen of a London office building with a fine view (the Blue Fin) for five weeks. Line up 12 former winners and finalists. putting three in the kitchen at a time. Let each trio design a five-course tasting menu. Advertise. Sell out in advance. Invite diners to arrive early for pop-up bar in the roof garden with stunning views. Feed them, while allowing them to peek into the kitchen where the stars are at work. Have the chefs work the room a bit as they near the end of service.
But beware, MasterChef. These aren't just regular diners. You've self-selected a group serious about their food, attuned to culinary criticism and with high, and informed, expectations. Expectations that neither the food nor the service lived up to.
We started with 2010 winner Dhruv Baker's spiced crab cakes with tamarind yogurt dressing. Which didn't hit the table until more than half an hour after we sat down; we were left alone so long we thought they'd forgotten about us. Light on crab, heavy on potato; if he'd called them crab croquetas they would have worked, but as crab cakes they fell short. The dressing was the best part of the dish, but I felt myself channelling Greg Wallace: I want more sauce, mate! The elegant presentation was, oddly, let down by a black plastic plate. Was picnic-ware part of the pop-up experience? (No, other courses were on proper china.)
The second starter, a pork and prosciutto terrine (pictured), was more successful. This came from 2012 finalist Tom Rennolds, who many will remember as the perfectionist plasterer turned king of presentation. Mouthfuls of chewy porcine goodness, with a lovely textural element added by the crunch of popcorn and crispy prosciutto on top. But I hit two pieces of gristle so hard I could have cracked a crown had I been chewing with more force. Schoolboy error.
We were excited about 2012 finalist Andrew Kojima's scallops, mackerel and sea bass with soba noodles, miso butter and ponzu. It was exactly the kind of Anglo-Japanese fusion that made him so appealing as a contestant. But the balance was wrong, with the mackerel overwhelming the other fish, made worse by the fact its skin was flabbily inedible.
Dhruv rode to the rescue with a main course of Achari-spiced duck with carrots and plum jus, a beautiful balance of sweet and savoury with a complexity of spices. We wanted more.
Dessert was another high point, with two offerings on the same plate. To one side, Dhruv's lemon, lime and cardamom tart with chai masala, another triumph of Asian fusion. But it was Koj who pushed all my pleasure buttons with a melt-in-mouth pistachio cake with burnt white chocolate ice cream.
These were served at erratic intervals, some coming quickly and others taking so long we expected one of those classic MasterChef scenes where the contestant pops out of the kitchen to apologise for a bit of a crisis and say he needed 10 more minutes. Perhaps the fire alarm that went off mid-meal? Though this, presumably, only excused the timing on the fish course.
The delays gave us time to ponder the extreme youth and variable quality of the wait staff. The table beside us seemed to have chatty fellows who explained who'd designed each dish and gave a bit of detail. Ours just put the plates down with a smile and recited the dish name that was in the menu. We wondered if the whole pop-up was an apprentice scheme to train up new, young talent? If so, good for them. But warn us so we can modify our expectations.
As the evening wound down, Dhruv and Koj wandered out of the kitchen to do some table hopping. No sign of Tom. Clearly, nobody had organised this. The ideal would have been to give the three a rotation, so every table got a couple of minutes with one of the star attractions. Sadly, it was far more casual, with them spending lots of time at a handful of tables (not ours, sadly!) and drifting away.
I'm enough of a fan of the franchise to watch out for a return of the pop-up in 2015, and I'll probably book a table. But I do hope they work out the kinks. I'd prefer to be channelling a bit more satisfied diner, and a bit less John and Greg.
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