There was a time when pop-ups were all the rage; I recall a summer when almost every event I went to you’d be forgiven for asking which venue this actually was, with Googlemaps potentially sending you across the country if you didn’t check the actual address on the invitation.
They do serve a purpose, though; in the highly competitive markets that major cities are, getting noticed can be challenging without a name above the door, or a massive marketing budget — and then if you’re a fabled spot in a remote destination, you’re similarly struggling for footfall. So, it makes sense to bring the mountain to Mohammed, as it were.
One such venture is Spey Shack taking up residency in prime real estate, upstairs at Pivot on 3 Henrietta Street. Spey Shack is the Covent Garden satellite of an alfresco dining spot at the Craigellachie Hotel in Speyside, transplanted south for an eight-week residency (10th July – 6th September) by Piers Adam — the man behind Mahiki and custodian of the Craigellachie — and Simon Wright of TGP International, on whose Henrietta Street turf it now sits. The pitch is Speyside’s whisky, seafood and Aberdeen Angus pedigree, repackaged for a crowd who might otherwise never make it north of Selfridges.
As pop-ups go, they couldn’t have picked a more central spot. Windows look out on the performers on the piazza, The Ivy is next door. It’s busy, the garrulousness of the crowd drowning out even the 90s indie classics straining over the buzz. On offer: an Aberdeen Angus smash burger — the beef from cattle raised two miles from the original Speyside outpost — and a lobster roll built on native lobster and Atlantic prawn landed a mere twelve miles away, available, should you wish to gild things further, with Oscietra caviar. Truffle fries, Irn-Bru and a short list of whisky cocktails round out the tartan-trimmed offering.
The original has pedigree — that Aberdeen Angus really does come from a farm you could walk to from the source kitchen — but something seems to get lost in the journey south. Honestly, with the food arriving on trays, and resembling something you’d send back at a motorway service station, I feel more like I’m in a Five Guys – if Five Guys had set up in a Georgian townhouse and decided to pimp their burgers with truffle dust. But that’s no cheap dig — Five Guys have built a genuine cult following on the strength of their burgers — just don’t expect fine dining. It’s a shack, after all. The point is the provenance is all there on paper; it just doesn’t quite make it onto the plate. Or tray, rather.
But we are nothing if not considered here at the Arb, so consider this: if you’re a burger fiend that wants to try the latest, that you like the option to elevate your fast food with truffle and caviar, that you’re looking for a venue with a seminal London backdrop to enjoy a well-made, well-priced whisky sour, and if you get peckish, grab a lobster roll, then there are far worse places you can enjoy the summer in the capital.
Where Spey Shack does make good on its Speyside billing is the bar. The whisky sours are a welcome tonic on the embers of a hot summer evening — proof that whatever’s happened to the food on its way from Speyside, the bar, at least, made the trip intact. And on days like these, a slush cocktail goes a hell of a long way to quell the heatwave.
So, perhaps pop-ups never really went away — these days we just call them ‘partnerships’, and dress them up as press-released brand extensions rather than something dreamt up over a long lunch. Spey Shack, on this outing, is a partnership still finding its feet: rather more miss than hit on the night we visited. But give it a warm evening, a well-made whisky sour in hand, and modest enough expectations of the food, and there are worse ways to lose an hour in Covent Garden this summer.
The Spey Shack at 3 Henrietta Street (Covent Garden, London, WC2E 8PS) runs until 6th September.
