Three Next-Gen Melbourne Pop-Ups Building Community Through Food

Pop-ups aren’t new, but the upswing in food pop-ups that happened during- and post-pandemic (largely out of necessity) has continued well into the mid-2020s. Last year, some of Melbourne’s most exciting new restaurants – including Saadi and Sachi – started as pop-ups. And chefs from all spheres continue to embrace the form.

For many chefs, pop-ups are a way to test the market, trial recipes or collaborate with restaurants and chefs they may not otherwise get the opportunity to work with. But these three recurring Melbourne pop-up concepts – We Eatin’ Good, My Name Chef and Playte – are all guided by the ethos of building community through food. Catch them regularly popping up at clubs, art galleries and music venues around town. 

We Eatin’ Good

Matisse Laida and Nisha Hunter started the queer community collective We Eatin’ Good in 2022. The goal is to create space for queer people of colour to connect over culture. 

Hunter helps produce the events, but Laida, an actor who works at a youth arts organisation, is the culinary force behind the We Eatin’ Good. For Laida, We Eatin’ Good is about collaboration and you’ll often find another chef’s name on the bill. “What’s the point of cooking by yourself? Culture is so expansive and collaborative. Especially as a Mauritian woman, food is a really big example of what collaboration can be, and I love it,” Laida says. “You add a little bit of your flavour, and I add a little bit of mine. Let’s make something beautiful.”

Among past collabs was a pop-up with Narit Kimsat of Yang Thai at Collingwood Children’s Farm. Another was a workshop alongside Gays Who Garden with Nez Kagonda of Fenton Farmhouse, where participants were shown how to plant and harvest fresh produce and were walked through seasonal cooking by Wesley and Niyanta from Playte. Laida and Hunter have also worked on Queerbaiting, a workshop collaboration with Ngoc Tran of Shop Bao Ngoc, where 15 people were taken on a boat, taught to fish, and then taught how to prepare and cook their catch.

The politics of food is also central to We Eatin’ Good. “Food is used to tell history and tell stories and complexities about a culture. The way that a culture stays alive through food is so beautiful,” says Laida. “We’re really trying to move towards educating ourselves and our community [about food sovereignty and sustainable food systems] alongside doing all the fun shit.”

Keep an eye on @we.eatin.good.bitch on Instagram for all event updates. 

Playte

Playte (a portmanteau of play and plate) is the result of a partnership between architect and artist Niyanta Sharma and horticulturalist Wesley Hauler-Winterford. At a Playte event, expect everything from hanging vegetables to three-course menus, all guided by a sense of play.

The self-described “gastro-architects” are constantly trying to “evolve how we do that in a more conscious and playful way”, Sharma says. In the three years since starting, Playte has hosted sandwich-making competitions at Hopkins Creek Music Festival, exhibited an edible installation at London Art Services, and sun-dried tomatoes over four days at Pitch. 

The pop-up series also aims to draw attention to food access and food quality – two things Sharma sees as inherently political. “We had a lot of conversations around navigating food as people of colour and our different heritage, as food is culturally a big part of both of our lives,” Sharma says. “What are the voices and what kind of conversations do we want to have around food as people of colour in a colonial setting?”

Teaming up with other chefs is also a core part of Playte’s philosophy. “As adults, there are only so many environments where we get to collaborate in a way that is fun. Collaboration is really important in how it forms stronger community bonds.

“We try to create an environment where people can learn about the food that they’re eating and learn about where it comes from. Hopefully it provokes other conversations.”

Keep an eye out for events through Playte’s Instagram @_playte and website playte.org. 

My Name Chef

Before officially starting My Name Chef in 2023, Ronen Jafari cooked a series of community potluck dinners, which he documented and shared in his self-published cookbook Jafari’s Kitchen. But regular pop-ups weren’t always the plan. Jafari says he fell into them after an event at Sleepy’s for the launch of  Jafari’s Kitchen, a collection of personal recipes compiled over three years. 

He now hosts regular pop-ups with events spanning fundraisers, events at art galleries and clubs, and collaborations with other food creatives including Laida of We Eatin’ Good.

Jafari sees pop-ups as a way to maintain a relationship to cooking that is filled with love and care. But he also prefers the format because he can take space from it if he needs – something he says is particularly important given that a lot of his work involves the emotional labour of mining his background.

“I’m Persian and Indian, and I kind of ebb and flow between really deep diving into one or the other,” he says. Currently, he’s exploring the food of Kashmir, which is “smack bang in the middle” of where his family is from in India.

Keep an eye out for events through @mynamechef069 on Instagram.