Popolo
A while back, a friend led me down one of the winding backstreets of Shoreditch to reveal a small, unassuming but perfectly formed treasure. Its name is Popolo, and I still can’t stop thinking about the food.
Taking its name from the Italian for people, Popolo creates little plates of Italian delicacies inspired by regional flavours with Moorish and Middle Eastern influences. The menu, like its venue, is small and considered; featuring dishes comprised of carefully sourced produce from independent farms. Continuously changing, it takes its cues from the seasons to capitalise on the freshest flavours. Try the spiced lamb with carrot tahini and pine nuts or the exceptional ravioli with nettles, ricotta and marjoram oil. You won't be disappointed. The pasta is freshly rolled each day, and the wines are chosen for their artisanal quality.
Sit around the bar downstairs and watch the chefs creating your next delicacy. It's a place you may very well be calling your home from home once you've sampled the cuisine. And, while the events of the past few months mean that you can only choose the collect or deliver option at present, the team have put together an exceptional ‘finish at home’ menu that will ensure the dishes keep their quality and keep you happy until Popolo opens it’s doors once more.
We had the pleasure of meeting Jon Lawson, the restaurant's Founder and Head Chef. We asked him to give us an insight into everything Popolo from it’s inception to its future.
Tell us about your background, have you always been a chef, what led you to create Popolo?
"I actually majored in sports psychology, I was a kickboxer and I fought internationally, and at around 30-31, I stopped competing and carried on as a personal trainer, but I was looking for something else. Daytime cookery programmes made me reflect on my time as a boxer where I travelled the world and sampled excellent global cuisine. When I returned, I wanted to recreate these dishes in my own home, all the flavours that I had experienced around the world. I cooked everything, travelled to SE Asia, learning about Thai and Vietnamese food and also Middle Eastern food. I started eating out and found restaurants that made British food more interesting.”
“I was looking to express the regional food coming from an Italian philosophy; simplicity and seasonality. ”
“I discovered through them that food was interesting, not only internationally but regionally. So, I travelled to Italy. I moved around, stunned by the locality and the seasonality. It was fascinating to see how the dishes would change when you travelled 30km down the road to another village. Italian food became my focal point, and I decided to train as a chef with the dream of working at The River Cafe one day. Two years after my first position at House of Commons, I visited Theo Randall, who had been head chef at the The River Cafe. I admired his cooking, so I emailed him and told him how impressed I was and said, if he happened to have a job I'd love to work there. He invited me in for a trial, and that was the beginning of 6 years cooking with this inspirational chef.”
What inspired the signature small dishes and informal style that is very much at the heart of Popolo's excellence?
“After my time with Theo, I felt I was beginning to find my style and ideas. I was looking to express the regional food coming from an Italian philosophy; simplicity, seasonality, focusing on ingredients and less on fancy techniques in the kitchen. But also with influence from my travels. Popolo was the manifestation of all of that.
It was about taking the formality away from the dining. In Italy, there is a particular way of eating; many dishes in a particular order; primi and secondi etc. I wanted to do something to make it a bit more fun and take from my Spanish heritage, how we go out and eat at night and share dishes with friends. I wanted to create Italian style food in a more informal setting. But what I didn't want to lose is the purity of pasta and Italian cuisine.”
So would you call this style of food fusion?
“No, definitely not. I see fusion as taking ingredients from entirely different places. I think ingredients that come from close proximity work well together. Proximity makes all the difference. You open a bottle of wine and drink it in Spain, and it can taste delicious, but it is even more fabulous with food from that area. You bring it back home, and it doesn't have quite the same taste, and that's because you aren't eating it with the local flavours that complement it. I like to combine ingredients that are sourced locally in the region that they are grown.”
Where do you source your ingredients and tell us more about the menu's seasonal elements?
“In terms of supplying, in the U.K. 20 years ago cavolo nero was so hard to find here, but now they grow it in Kent. I try to avoid food flown from afar; it's not great for the planet. But there are some things that you can't substitute like olive oil. It's all about trying to access the best ingredients but trying to find the right balance; it's about when you can compromise on taste and distance and when you can't. Our menu has no choice but to change due to the seasons. We aren't willing to serve not particularly tasty asparagus from Peru in a risotto in December. We know that our food must be seasonally led by our local UK suppliers and our neighbours in Europe.”
The wines are an integral part of your menu, tell us more about them?
“The wines are a significant part of the philosophy here, with the focus on the quality of the ingredients. We believe in artisan winemaking, from small producers, with low intervention. What we mean by that is that we are trying to stay away from mass-produced wines with loads of additives. So we like to serve unfiltered wines. We also offer vegan wines. Most people don't realise that many commercial wines in the supermarket have been filtered with fish gills and all kinds of proteins, like egg whites. We work with growers that don't use pesticides: so biodynamic wines, low intervention and natural yeasts. Just like when you make sourdough bread, it tastes so much better than mass-produced bread with loads of additives. The flavour is much more complex. It requires a lot more skill to make a refined, low intervention wine than it does to make a commercial wine because you haven't got all these additives that control the process. That's where it becomes a craft. You associate artisan wine with the skill and the art of the growers and the producers.”
Your suppliers are clearly a significant part of the process and menu.
“Yes, I am very fortunate that I work with some exciting suppliers in the UK and they take me and my staff on trips to France, Italy and Spain to meet the producers so we get to see their lifestyles, how they live, their farms how they work and we taste their produce. They also come over to the UK. We had a producer here from Lombardy - he supplies the only Biodynamic Franciacorta wine which is the equivalent of Champagne in Italy. We had a tasting here, and it was delicious!”
Popolo at Home
And tell us more about the dining concept and space itself?
“We were not the first to come up with the idea of sharing plates and casual dining; we were inspired by places like Barrafina in Soho or the Palomar. All these places share a connection through the style of service. That caught my attention, and I thought, my kind of food stood apart enough to make my own statement to try to take the best elements from that style of service. I was so fortunate that I got to work with the restaurant manager of Barrafina in Soho when they won the Michelin star. It was a groundbreaking moment because no informal restaurant before them had won a Michelin star. They changed history.
We were awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand which is the equivalent of the Michelin star for the more affordable, less formal dining venue but one that executes exceptional cooking. We were very honoured to have received that. But I think that there is an opportunity now for restaurants with this style of casual dining to excel. But it takes a lot of work; we pay a lot of attention to every detail. In terms of the service here, the experience, from the moment the customer walks through the door, how we greet them, how we serve them, there are rules, there are ways that we do things. Yet, at the same time, we want them to feel at ease.”
What are your plans for the future of Popolo?
“Sleep would be nice! In Oct 2019 it was the third anniversary. It's been a significant lifestyle change for me. I've gone from working out and being athletic, to living a physically demanding life in a very different way where you work very long hours. I do have ambitions to grow but not in terms of volume. I'd like to travel more in terms of discovering regional food. At some point, I see myself writing about food and my life experiences with it. Would we open another Popolo? I think it would be very challenging to recreate another place like Popolo without being there every day, all day. I don't know if I could take myself away from my baby to do that. I work with such a talented team both front of house and in the kitchen. If they have ambitions to grow then potentially, there is a way Popolo can grow, but like the produce that we source, it would have to be a sustainable form of growth. So we wouldn't want to lose that connection, that feeling people get when we come in. That we really care.”
It's a small but perfectly formed menu, do you have any favourite dishes?
“My favourite dish is whatever is in season this week! A few years ago truffles had a bad season and so we decided not to put it on the menu. It was the first time we hadn't served a plate of Taglierini with white truffle. And I have to say if my suppliers tell me that I can expect white truffles again, I'll be the first one to have a plate of Tagliarini with white truffle, that will be my treat!”
Popolo usually takes reservations for tables and the window counter on the first floor. At present, they are offering a collect or delivery menu that customers can finish at home. Take a look and order here.
Jon at work in the kitchen
Video and photos all courtesy of Paul Fuller - see more of his inspiring work here.