Celebrate British modernism at new café by Sotheby’s, Tom Dixon, and chef Stevie Parle

The best of British art, design, and food are gathering under one roof this month thanks to a new event at Sotheby’s.

In conjunction with the auction house’s Modern British & Irish Art Week (17 – 24 November), acclaimed chef Stevie Parle and esteemed designer Tom Dixon will revive their plant-filled pop-up, Joy at Sotheby’s, at its New Bond Street location, but this time with the addition of some very special British artworks decorating the space.

Innovative British cooking 

Visitors to the space will be able to enjoy breakfast, lunch, or one of the five supper club menus designed by Parle and featuring his signature use of locally sourced and exactingly harvested ingredients, such mushrooms he gathers from his own garden, his home-picked elderberries, raw beef from Kent, and giant wild sea bass from Margate. 

Speaking about the menu, Parle says, ‘It’s a really incredible time of year to be cooking some special meals. I want to make the most perfect risotto with a deep, delicious chicken broth, finish it with yellow Kentish jersey butter and three-year-old Parmesan, and cover it with white truffles brought directly from the nose of Fellipe – the Lagotto Romagnolo truffle dog in Umbria – to Sotheby’s.’

With his trademark flair for rarely used ingredients, Parle will also be baking almost extinct apple varieties into delectable desserts, with fragrant quince from the national fruit collections at Brogdale, Kent. ‘I’ve recently found a new egg farmer and his eggs somehow taste even better than those of my own chickens,’ says Parle. ‘They warrant a delicious nutmeg custard tart with some prunes soaked in Julian Timperley’s ten-year-old cider brandy.’

A showcase of British art and design 

Guests can feast on dishes such as creel-caught large Scottish langoustine roasted with butter and seaweed; and venison loin roasted with bacon, chestnuts, sage and barbera. At the same time, they can feast their eyes on work by some of the great icons of British Modernism, including Henry Moore, Howard Hodgkin, and Bridget Riley. 

Visitors will be able to enjoy the food and the view from Dixon’s ‘Hydro Chairs’, a 100 per cent recyclable design created in collaboration with the world’s largest aluminium producer (and featured in our sustainable furniture round-up), and eat off his ultra-sleek ‘Tube’ tables, each topped with a rare, oriental marble named Primavera.

‘Modern British is something both me and Stevie can buy into,’ says Dixon about the collaboration. ‘It exists in contemporary design and food culture right now, so there’s a hook that’s fairly obvious.’ While Sotheby’s promotes ’what is rare, or unique in paintings and sculpture’, he adds, he and Parle do the same ‘in foodstuffs and design’.

‘I think what we do sits really well in the British modern sensibility,’ adds Parle. ‘But I think the point of what we’re doing is the same as always really, we just want to create amazing experiences for people, lift people up, have some fun and maybe give Sotheby's a bit of a jolt!’

INFORMATION

Joy at Sotheby’s, London, 18 – 22 November 2021, sothebys.com