In a city already known for its culinary pleasures, the chef pop-up has become a phenomenon.
On a given day, a favorite bar hangout might turn into a ramen shop, or a favorite coffee spot might suddenly become a burger joint. Behind the social media announcements and the grill are local chefs, busily roving around San Antonio plying their trade for eager and hungry patrons.
At least one prominent chef in the city, Stefan Bowers of Rebelle in the St. Anthony Hotel, thinks pop-ups are the wave of the food service industry future, given the advantages of sidestepping the significant investment required to create standard brick-and-mortar restaurants.
“You’re seeing it all over the city, and it’s just gonna increase nonstop,” Bowers said “This could be what most places become.”
A combination of circumstances is fueling the chef pop-up trend, from the low investment levels required to the economic realities of the restaurant industry since the COVID-19 pandemic.
A proving ground
One sunny Saturday afternoon in February saw hundreds of eager patrons lined up outside the Little Death wine bar on the St. Mary’s Strip awaiting the chance to order Palestinian food, a rarity even in a city burgeoning with diverse food options.
The cooking career of Saha Palestinian Cuisine chef Moureen Kaki started inauspiciously when, as a 7-year-old, she nearly burned the house down making scrambled eggs, she said. Now in her 30s, Kaki stood facing a line snaking through Little Death’s small concrete patio, across its makeshift herb garden and through the adjoining Burger Boy parking lot to Kendall Street.
Four hours later, the supply of hummus, falafel and smoked chicken msakhan had been exhausted, as were Kaki and her small crew of coworkers.
“We were busting our butts,” said Sara Masoud, who handled the front of house, taking and delivering orders. “Every time I looked up, the line just kept going, which was exciting. But yeah, it was overwhelming.”
The crew packed up their trays, burners and portable oven to return to their day jobs for a week before preparing for the following Saturday, the next in a 12-week string of planned pop-ups.
The event was nearly a year to the day that Kaki, Masoud and her sister Suzie Masoud met in Sara’s home to cook together. Tweets of the food caught the eye of Little Death proprietor Chad Carey who was on the lookout for pop-ups to pair with the wine bar.
With such an enthusiastic response from the get-go, Kaki said eventually opening a brick-and-mortar version of Saha is “absolutely” the goal. Saha’s success out of the gate showed that, despite the investment required, it might be a viable possibility.
The pop-up was an essential proving ground, she said. “Now it feels like there’s something there to work with.”
Business vs. fun
Little Death regularly plays host to restaurant pop-ups, from Vegan and Sara’s “plant-based comfort eats” to the Italian sandwiches of Gigi’s Deli, to Pumpers, Bowers’ on-again, off-again smash burger project.
Pumpers was so popular during its 10-month, more-or-less monthly run starting in the late summer of 2020 that it evolved into a stationary food truck parked outside of Paper Tiger in mid-2021, and Bowers even considered the viability of a brick-and-mortar version.
Bowers had opened several brick-and-mortar restaurants with business partner Andrew Goodman, including Feast, Battalion and Rebelle, before taking on ownership of Playland, a raucous downtown wood-fired pizza restaurant and bar. He maintained his work at Rebelle and Playland while running Pumpers.
Started as a pressure release from the coronavirus pandemic that had problematized so many aspects of the restaurant industry, from restrictions on patrons to a crisis in employee retention, Pumpers “wasn’t fun” once it started becoming more of a business than a creative venture, Bowers said.
The magic of Pumpers was “the whole scene,” he said, from the chaotic fun of outdoor cooking with a background of loud DJ music and racy, attitudinous poster art by local illustrator Michelle Dobbs, who goes by MadDogSexJerk. And rather than an engine of commerce, “the burger itself is just, as shallow as it sounds, just a little artistic expression, using food as a vehicle.”
Pumpers last popped up for Little Death’s 4th anniversary in March, but its future beyond that is uncertain.
No more ‘no’
Creativity and flexibility are what attract many chefs to give pop-ups a try. David Gamez of the Japanese fusion pop-up Awase said he and fellow chef Lorenzo Sixtos had heard the word “no” too many times while working for a Japanese food franchise that focused too much on streamlining operations at the expense of care and creativity.
When the pandemic shutdown reduced their working hours at Sari-Sari Supper Club and Box Street Social, respectively, the two confabbed on the possibility of starting a pop-up that would give them the culinary freedom they sought.
“In the end, we were just like, ‘You know what, let’s do something on our own,’” Gamez said. “That way nobody can tell us ‘no,’ we can do exactly what we want. And I guarantee you, it’ll be a hit.”
They started with takeaway bento boxes and home ramen kits, then a kitchen takeover at Singhs Vietnamese restaurant on the St. Mary’s Strip, which resulted in multiple invitations to pop up. Next they appeared at Black Laboratory Brewing on Hackberry Street and the now-defunct Pink Hill on Broadway, then took to locations with existing kitchens — like Three Star Bar, Scorpion, Hands Down and the San Antonio Gold coffee shop in Southtown — so they could avoid having to move their own cooking setups each time.
They’ll next visit Slate Theory Winery in Fredericksburg as part of their overall effort to expand their customer base while working toward an eventual brick-and-mortar location.
“They have clientele from Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and a lot of other close-by cities. I feel like that’s a good move for us,” Gamez said. “We’re really not trying to stick with one place. We want to just be around and keep grinding to make our name known.”
The ‘lore’ factor
King Christopher Okoli started as a chef at Bliss in January 2020, just before the bottom fell out of the restaurant business due to pandemic closures. As the industry recovered over the subsequent two years, Okoli returned to regular work making pastries, cooking octopus and pork belly, grilling steaks and arranging charcuterie boards.
Colleagues had been urging Okoli to make his traditional Nigerian dish called un-gwan-gway, a savory tomato-and-spice-based stew served with beef or chicken over rice, and he began selling $10 plates out of his home.
Named for the dish, Un-Gwan-Gway moved to pop-up status when Okoli started pitching a tent in St. Paul Square for occasional local vendor markets called The Pop Up, then added a new spot on a strip of South Presa Street near several bars.
Having spent a decade cooking in restaurants since starting at age 19 in a relative’s Atlanta establishment, Okoli said running a pop-up fits his lifestyle goals and desire for work-life balance.
“What I want to do doesn’t fit brick and mortar. I’m doing this because I have my time,” he said. Okoli also likes the inherent unpredictability of pop-ups and the romance of what he called “the lore factor,” that people tend to hear of him spontaneously or by word of mouth.
“When I pop up … If you don’t catch me, you don’t catch me. That’s the beauty of it, the lore factor,” he said.
Okoli studied at the Culinary Institute of America in San Antonio and credited the school’s focus on entrepreneurship. “They actually do a really good job of teaching the business side of a restaurant,” he said, including bookkeeping skills and the math required to grow recipes to accommodate the 100 or 150 servings most pop-ups plan for.
Go with the flow
Chef Jose Frade, who serves as associate dean at the Culinary Institute, started his own Under the Table pop-up in McAllen a decade ago, mostly as a way to experiment with flavors and dishes that the South Texas food scene hadn’t yet explored.
Frade said the COVID-19 pandemic was the catalyst for the service industry to innovate, and pop-ups are a natural result. The phenomenon continues in part due to the lower level of investment required on the part of operators, and because for diners, the experience can be fun.
“It provides excitement for the diner because you never know what you’re gonna get,” he said.
Frade said the school’s curriculum on entrepreneurship can go as deep as students care to explore, through a baccalaureate business administration program and a course on restaurant ownership at the master’s degree level.
“The food and wine industry is quite large, and the umbrella to cover all those careers is difficult to do, but we try to do the best that we can so they have a lot of opportunity to go which way they want,” he said.
But pop-ups also allow cooks who haven’t undergone formal training to give professional cooking a try.
Nari Hodges of Ooyoo Pan, a Korean-Mexican fusion pop-up “micro-bakery,” is untrained as a baker. She cooks her macarons in a commercial kitchen, then brings the sweet treats to market at The Pop Up and the R+R Collective Second Saturday market on South Flores Street.
Her initial inspiration was to start a cafe and bakery like the storefront shops in Korea that she loves, but Hodges said the level of investment and commitment to a brick-and-mortar bakery might be too much.
For now, she said she’s content to keep baking and doing pop-ups while she pursues a career in 3D animation and game design. In true pop-up fashion, she said, “I think I’m just going with the flow at the moment.”
