Dinner Exchange is an ethical food project started by Alice Planel, a French woman brought up in England. This supper club uses food donated by New Covent Garden Market vegetable stalls, mostly organic, and asks guests to give a donation in return for their dinner. This falls in with a tradition amongst food activists of ‘skipping’ food chucked away by supermarkets. When I was squatting in the London Fields Lido a few years ago, almost all the food was obtained from bins. It might sound disgusting, but the food was still intact, often packaged, sometimes we found unopened champagne and chocolates. The best source was Lidl: unlike the top supermarkets, they didn’t deliberately ruin the food in their bins with washing up liquid.
Friday night, the Dinner Exchange was held at Alice’s house near Willesden Junction.
Around 25 guests were seated along a long table, around half the table were journalists from East London. I sat next to a young architect, wearing a tailored coat and a neat traditionally wrapped turban. We exhausted my knowledge of Sikhs ‘What do you think of those weird white Sikhs in America?’ and of architecture. I photographed Nigel Coates and Zaha Hadid many years ago for a magazine. Nigel had the most seductive voice, you fell in love with him instantly but of course he’s gay. Zaha Hadid is the highest profile female architect in the world.
All proceeds went to Foodcycle
BeccaRothwell
What a wonderful event to read about! I'm interning for FoodCycle at the moment and I knew Alice had recently joined us but I wasn't aware of her supper club or that the proceeds went to FoodCycle! It is so great to hear about others working to combat the ridiculous levels of food waste we have in this country, and a big thank you must go to Alice and to everyone who attended for donating; and to you for posting about it of course. Think I'll have to get my name down for a future Dinner Exchange evening.
Interesting to read about your attempt at being a war photographer too, you've lived such an incredibly varied life! I suppose war photography's loss is the underground food scene's gain though.
theundergroundrestaurant
Yes i feel that Alice's supper club goes back to the political roots of the underground food scene.
You never know, I may get another bash at being a war photographer once the teen has flown the coop.
Sally - My Custard Pie
I do hope you'll publish your autobiography one day – I'm sure it would sell like hot Marmite cup cakes. Great itiative to highlight how obscene food waste is.
TheFastestIndian
What a fab story- shame about the lack of Punjabi, you might have got away with it otherwise! But I think India was a bit mental then, so well done on just being shoved on a train rather than something worse.
I too am looking forward to the Ms ML autobiog.
theundergroundrestaurant
thanks for your comments. I was terribly naive. Imagine how behaviour like that would be treated nowadays?
The Curious Cat
Er: 'As is when I got arrested and offloaded from my plane at Delhi airport on my return journey because the Indian and British secret service had been following me since Southall.' Please do tell more?!
What a crazy story – I think I'd have fallen apart too at the end of it all! Wow….
And may I ask – do you know why top supermarkets ruin their food? Does anyone ever question this? Surely it is morally wrong?!