The Handbook Reviews: Tube Supperclub
Usually, if you’re having to eat an entire meal on the tube, chances are something has gone askew. A takeaway pizza desperately inhaled to provide some crucial pre night-out soakage; a meal-deal on the way to the airport to avoid being catapulted into ruin by those Heathrow prices after oversleeping. That is until now, thanks to the Tube Supperclub restaurant, a revolutionary dining concept that dares to imagine London’s most famous transport system as a destination in and of itself.
The meal takes place on an old Victoria Line tube carriage from 1967 (think a Bakerloo line carriage from 2023) located in the middle of the Walthamstow Pumphouse Museum, and is helmed by Head Chef Bea Maldonado Carreño. Hailing from Bogotá, she puts together a six course tasting menu inspired by Latin American cuisine, from Mexico right down to Patagonia.
What sets it apart
You could try to make a tenuous thematic link between the setting and cuisine – the cultural importance of Latin American transcontinental railways in accelerating economic growth, anyone? Most of all, though, the novelty aspect is just very cool; like eating in an underwater restaurant, or in pitch black darkness.
It has been going for almost eight years, so the general public of London’s appetite for dining in a tube carriage shows no signs of abating.
Our experience
Beginning with an opening introduction from Carreño, they have done a great job of turning what could have turned into just a novelty experience into a genuine intimate affair. The atmosphere, through dimmed lighting, a carefully selected playlist and generally boosting the ambience and comfort of a tube carriage, successfully meets its intended target of feeling more like a dinner party than a restaurant.
There is a social atmosphere as couples seated next to each other at one of the main long tables chat with each other. It feels like an ‘occasion restaurant’ – we sang happy birthday to other diners on two occasions. My friend who joined me said she had wanted to try it since learning about it from a co-worker who had – yep, you guessed it – been taken by her husband for her birthday. From £67 per head, including a drink upon entry, the price is one of the more affordable tasting menu experiences in the capital.
While creating a unique dining environment, the novelty location throws up several obvious potential restrictions to the most crucial aspect of the whole deal: actually cooking the meal. The kitchen was located in another carriage just across from us and, thankfully, none of the obstacles one imagines might arise came to pass.
The fusion menu starts with a Mexican-inspired double act of blue corn tortilla soup, which admittedly lacks a needed kick, and cassava and white corn croquettes filled with mozzarella and cheddar cheese in a yellow chilli sauce that forces you to drag each croquette around the plate, hoping to soak up every last ounce.
For the highlight, we travelled to Peru – a cuisine which, at least in London, seems more popular than ever, with Nikkei-inspired restaurants popping up all over the place. Typically, it was a ceviche featuring lime-cured hake, red onion, toasted cancha corn, coriander, tamarind and rocoto chilli leche de tigre. Bright, fiery, zesty – ceviche is the type of dish that inspires you to throw all manner of adjectives at, such is its complexity and deliciousness.
Verdict
Finishing off a spongy amaretto-soaked cake for dessert, wishing that it was actually an active tube line that could immediately take me home to Brixton and save me the walk to Walthamstow Station, I settled upon two facts. I would, even if the food was desperate, book into any restaurant situated in a 60s tube carriage; and I would book into any restaurant that served the same food, even if it was in a now unfathomably-boring sounding ‘regular’ restaurant setting. Throw a unique setting and great food together, your instagram feed and tastebuds will thank you.
Tube Supperclub
10 S Access Rd, London E17 8AX
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