Medieval Supper Club

Join historians, chefs, musicians and jesters for the most immersive, multi-sensory supper club London has ever seen and immerse yourself in the rich wonders of Britain’s lost medieval cuisine in a gorgeous, candlelit restaurant in the dark heart of Smithfield.

• All food & wine included in the ticket price.
• See sample menu below; vegetarian options available

For much of the last century, Britain has not had a good reputation when it comes to cuisine. But much of this is to do with war rationing, a fetish for over-boiling, and the deterioration of the climate. During this immersive dining experience we will give you a taste of Britain’s original — startlingly original — cuisine.

In our hosts — chef-to-the-stars and acclaimed Times journalist Mr Jack Burke, who has founded a cult supper club in London and has worked as a private chef to VIPs all over Europe, we have someone with the gastronomic prowess and eloquent charisma to cook and communicate the wonders of medieval food — indeed the lost cuisine of Britain — and bestselling author and historian Dr Matthew Green who will set the banquet in its broader social context. See below for full bios.

The feast will take place in the beautifully atmospheric, award-winning restaurant Cloth in the shadow of St Bartholomew the Great, glittering to the light of bee’s-wax candles, cheek-by-jowl with the only surviving pre-Fire houses in the entire City, set to live lute music.

Smithfield is a place of meat and miracles, of saints and swine, where, according to the foundational document of St Bartholomew’s the Great, the gate to the kingdom of heaven opens in the medieval city’s filthy, malodorous streets, one of the most beguiling parts of London, where time itself seems to have stood still and a mysterious medieval air linger still.

The banquet will be preceded by a 15-minute whirlwind tour of St Bartholomew’s, the best preserved medieval church in London. From the graveyard, under tall trees, you will see the restaurant shimmering in the distance, beckoning you in.

What to expect

We will present you with a kaleidoscope of medieval dishes, as varied as the dusty light pouring through the rose window of a medieval cathedral.

From hedgehog-sized meatballs in jelly to thyme-stuffed dormice, boar’s head pies being paraded in to great fanfare to freshly-baked eunuch chickens, alongside mashed parsnips with saffron — creamy and golden — and buttery worts, these servings, far from being tokenistic gimmicks, will be painstakingly recreated and genuinely delicious. There will be delicious puddings, too, from apple and quince tartlets to nutmeg custard pies.

As each dish is borne to your table on the wings of our servants and cupbearers, our head chef Mr Burke will talk you through what you’re about to eat and the alchemy behind it — in an authentic Middle English dialect, naturally. Between each course, Dr Green will evoke illuminating facets of medieval city life in startling detail, from fashion to cuisine to the way people who lived in the timber-framed houses around us saw their world, suffused it with colour, and imbued it with meaning, including some vivid evocations of banqueting culture.

But this is no dry lecture. Gloriously eschewing the etiquette that governs most modern restaurants, you will not just eat what they ate but how they ate, seizing the meat if you wish with ‘God’s cutlery’ (your hands: plastic bibs provided), glazing your plates in spittle then chucking the bones behind you, slapping your neighbour on the back and yelling ‘frolic’! to express your approval, and joining in the chants and toasts as the food arrives.

Truly it will be the most Saturnalian, yet historically faithful, bacchanal in London.

There will be wine of course. A cup of mead to welcome you and then, placed on the long communal tables, great jewel-encrusted pigs’ troughs of delicious medieval wine, dyed different colours of the rainbow: each banqueter will be issued with a coconut shell to scoop out the elixir and pour it down your throat, as was the custom (no manners in those days). We will finish with the desert drink Hippocras, a spiced red wine with sugar, cardamom, and ginger.

There will be dishes of medieval aphorisms to ponder & discuss, menus-on-scrolls (yours to keep), and a jester to keep you on your toes. You can sit with your friends or with total strangers and move about as you wish throughout the night.

What will you get out of the experience

A unique concert of talent will bring you the most immersive, multi-sensory supper club in London, spanning food, drink, music, history, and theatre in a beguiling restaurant in one of the most enchanting parts of Old London.

You will slide into a mirror universe where English cuisine was lauded — long before its reputation was sullied in the 20th century— for its richness, variety and flavour. Placing familiar ingredients in a totally alien arrangement will bring home just how bland and boring our own contemporary cuisine — and dining rituals — can be. For one night only, you will experience the gastronomic delights of England’s original, vanished cuisine.

Most of all, it will be enormous fun. And absolutely delicious.

MORE ON THE VENUE

Cloth, 44 Cloth Fair, EC1A 7JQ

In a Grade-II listed building on one of the oldest and most beautiful streets in the City of London, Cloth exists ‘to inspire and nurture the craft of exceptional wine and food’ offering a modern take on the old, trusted classics behind a black-painted old shop frontage. Gazing through the late 18th-century window panes onto St Bartholomew’s and the old slaughter ground of Smithfield beyond, brings a sense of cosy rustic chic, heightened by the flickering of candles agains the wainscoting. ‘I can’t imagine a more charming place to eat at 10pm, ideally in a storm’, writes Tanya Gold in theSpectator; ‘those old hipster joints in east London’, opines Giles Coren in the Times, ‘— Cloth is what they were all trying to be.’ Once home to poet John Betjeman, the closely-packed tables and autumnal hue bring a sense of convivial intimacy — ideal for a medieval supper club.

MORE ON YOUR HOSTS

MR JACK BURKE

Jack Burke is a writer, presenter and private chef whose work blends sharp observation, subcultural curiosity and a deep love of food. He’s a former QI Elf and film researcher; he wrote a cookbook for Leon. Jack studied Classics at UCL before working in television. He began cooking professionally during university summers, mostly in France and Italy, and continues to take on private chef work alongside his writing. After a cancer diagnosis in his twenties — and years of recalibration — Jack began writing a memoir and developing a television series about hidden Britain: its eccentrics, subcultures and off grid culinary traditions. He now runs Quaff Club, a popular London supper club, and his feature writing can be read in the Times, YOU Magazine and Dispatch.

DR MATTHEW GREEN

Writer, historian & broadcaster Dr Matthew Green is the author of Shadowlands: A Journey through Lost Britain (Faber), a Times top 10 bestseller, Waterstones Book of the Year 2023, and shortlisted for the Wainwright Literary Prize. He has a doctorate in history from Oxford University and has appeared in many television documentaries and radio programmes, and writes for the Telegraph, Guardian and FT. His first book, London: A Travel Guide through Time (Penguin) was described by the Sunday Times as ‘all-sensory and immersive’ and by the Londonist as ‘easily the best social history of London for a decade’. His writing has been praised by Claire Tomalin, Ian Mortimer, Cerys Matthews, and by historian and podcaster Tom Holland as ‘brilliant’. He lives in Leytonstone and loves red wine and cold-water swimming (not in that order).