Pop Up #6: Romance Through Films

A short story by Michael Chen with photos from Sangita, Yoshi, and Michael

As MIT students, we often get lost in the stone cold touch of our iPad screens and the endless differential equations on our PSETs. We get so busy that we start scheduling every second of our lives, quantifying every ounce of fun, and objectifying love. Through a collaboration with MIT Datamatch, I wanted to reignite a flame to remind people how exciting, beautiful, and joyful love used to seem before we got too busy to care. As a hopeless romantic, I wanted to convey the type of love that I refuse to give up on- the dancing in the rain love, the candlelit dinner love, and, most of all, the fairytale love we learned from watching movies. That’s why this popup was called “Romance through Films”. Every single one of us grew up watching happily ever after playout on the big screen and wishing that one day we’d get to experience that type of love in real life. 

What if we could? What if we could give that fantastical feeling of love to everyone who attended this popup? That was our goal, and we got to ideating. 

We were tasked with making food for pairs of guests that were matched either by our in house cupids or through Datamatch. As we brainstormed, I showcased images of food from classic romantic films. Almost every image ended up being from an animated Disney movie. Why? Well, what can I say? I’ve got exquisite taste.

We decided on a journey that started with the quintessential food in every romantic film of all time, a cheese board. As an entreé, we seriously considered giving each couple a plate of spaghetti and having them re-enact Lady and the Tramp. But, thankfully for our guests, I was hell-bent on making ratatouille, but what form would it take? Obviously, we couldn’t just serve ratatouille and that’s when we decided on ratatouille with lamb chops. It was daring, bold, and expensive as we’ve never worked with lamb chops in Mince. As we talked about the desserts, there was so much potential! We could make the mysterious Gray Stuff, the legendary 15 layer cake, but we decided on an apple rose tart inspired by the rose from Beauty and the Beast. When is one dessert ever enough? For the first time ever, we decided on making two desserts! The second was a box of chocolates inspired by Forrest Gump (because we couldn’t only take inspiration from animated Disney movies). Finally, we needed a drink that would make our guests fall in love. We decided upon perhaps the greatest love story of all time- Shrek. There’s no better way to ensure two people fall in love than to make a delicious love potion. 

To make these wild ideas come to life, we needed the dream team. Haris and I worked on the starter, Omar, Monse, and Haris worked on the main, Jacob, April, and Eliza worked on the dessert, and Alayo and Emily worked on the drink. 

As we got closer to trying out our ideas on RND day, we honed in our recipe ideas and bought ingredients. We made key decisions like saying cheese boards are too boring. So, we decided to encase the richest brie and fig jam inside an airy, crispy puff pastry and bake it with a peach honey and thyme sauce. We decided that ratatouille, one of the most labor intensive dishes to make, wasn’t difficult enough so let’s sous vide the lamb and make four different sauces to go with it. 

Armed with our ideas, we approached D-day, or rather RND day. We invaded, as we always do, the New House Country Kitchen and began our experimentation. At first, it’s chaos, everyone’s running around, every stove top is steaming, every last corner of tabletop space is filling to the brim, the temperature is rising exponentially, the constant worry of triggering the fire alarm, all within a glorified closet sized space.

But, I soon saw something beautiful- every dish began to come to life as we gave each other samples of our creations. I still remember my first taste of the Bordeaux chocolate that the dessert team made. I felt like I had a ratatouille moment. It was perhaps the best chocolate truffle I’ve ever had. It was heartwarming to see all our eyes light up when trying the brie and the puff pastry with the freshly baked focaccia. Somehow, every dish ended up working out deliciously after just one night of RND. After weeks of eating dining hall food, just the little samples of the delicious creations we made was such a dopamine rush. 

While the cook team focused on making amazing food, everyone else crafted the experience. To be frank, MIT has an ugly campus, and it’s hard to find a gorgeous location to have a popup experience. But, somehow Sophia booked the most romantic location possible- the McCormick penthouse with 360 views of the sunset. There was no way it wasn’t going to be breathtaking. Tananya, Maya, and Emily designed this incredible table setup that looked like it was straight out of a movie while practically spending no money.

It’s so mind-boggling that we organize an event like this in the middle of one of the busiest weeks of school and still make it work. With all the craziness and preparation, somehow we made it to the night before the popup- prep night. Most of our dishes could be prepped the day of, but the main dish was a clear exception. The ratatouille was incredibly time intensive and we all tried to help out as much as possible to spread out the work. 

After we finished the ratatouille, it was incredibly late, but I was determined to create custom boxes for the boxes of chocolate. I spent all night designing, laser cutting, and assembling the boxes in a makerspace on campus. 

Everything the day of was a blur, but I'll do my best to recall it. While Sophia and Melissa got their workout by lifting chairs and tables up to the penthouse in McCormick, the cook team was on their way prepping for the big day. For the starter, Haris baked sheets upon sheets of warm, homey focaccia with thyme and olives. 

Omar and Monse began the sous vide process for the lamb and spent lots of time on the presentation of the ratatouille. But, despite all their efforts, there was something missing and time was ticking. The presentation just wasn’t perfect and we had to figure out how to fix it in the few hours before service started. We also were missing a few key grocery items so Tananya had to save us through a last minute h-mart trip. 

The pressure was on, especially for the dessert team. They had the most work to do the day of and none of it was trivial. April worked hard on getting puff pastry and rose tarts ready, as Eliza tempered chocolate, and Jacob mixed a raspberry filling. Eliza, through chocolate magic, managed to successfully temper the chocolate and make loads of Bordeaux truffles (enough for lots of extras for the team). But, struggles started appearing at the worst possible moment. The white chocolate truffles for the box of chocolates weren’t coming out right despite all of our efforts and it was nearly time for service.

With all our hard work coming together, it was finally time for the big event. As I walked in the dining room before the event began, I knew this was going to be special. The view was spectacular and the atmosphere was screaming romance. But, to elevate the experience even further, I had one more surprise up my sleeve for the guests. I’m a firm believer that good music and good food are a match made in heaven so I asked two of my talented musician friends- Caden and Aryo to play a violin/guitar duet during the event. 

The guests started to roll in right on time and that’s when the action began. Drink team was up first. I was incredibly nervous because they did RND without me, so I tasted their drink for the first time just minutes before service began. Luckily, it was fantastic. Even better, visually it was stunning. Alayo and Emily cut strawberries into hearts and placed chunks of dry ice in the drink so it smoked and created a show-stopping effect. I couldn’t have imagined a better start to the meal. 

Next up was the starter team. We needed everything to go perfectly. We wanted the brie to come right out of the oven when the starters were served so we tried to time it to finish baking right after drinks were served. As Haris worked on baking the brie, I raced to make a peach, honey, thyme sauce entirely by taste - no recipes. It was nerve wracking, but with everyone’s help we managed to plate all the bread and puff pastry. 

There’s always immense pressure on the main course. It has to be filling, delicious, and the star of the show. The scariest part was we didn’t even really know how we were going to plate it despite all the practice we had done the days before. But, somehow right before we had to serve, a lightbulb went off, and we figured it out. 

There were so many components to the dish that Monse had to start plating even before we started the appetizers. While she did that, Omar rushed to finish the lamb which was in a massive sous vide pot downstairs. Under a big time crunch, we somehow managed to make the best version of this dish possible and serve it elegantly. 

Finally, it was time for the two-course dessert. First up was the apple rose tarts. I was very worried about this dish because I couldn’t imagine how to properly plate it. Our original plan was to create crystal domes with isomalt sugar, but when that fell through, I was afraid there would be too much white space and the dish wouldn’t look right. But, when Eliza sprinkled the powdered sugar on the plates it filled up the space so well, and the dish turned out to be remarkably simple yet beautiful. 

For our last course of the night, Jacob somehow managed to take what life gave him and fix the white chocolates. We opened up the box and plated four chocolate truffles per box. It was the perfect way to end the night and the guests loved it. 

Before the event even began, I wished that I could somehow record the entire experience so I could capture the ambience and the amazing moments. Miraculously, out of nowhere, my friend Ishita asked if she could film the popup for her film class and of course I said yes. The videography style matched the event perfectly, and almost felt like a prop throughout the dinner. Thanks to Ishita, this event can live forever on old fashioned film. 

With all the guests fed, we took time to feed ourselves. We stuffed ourselves with chocolate and lamb to reward ourselves for a job well done. On each of the boxes, we had written the quote “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get”. With this popup, we had so many difficulties and challenges along the way, but somehow we turned it into this beautiful experience. While I meant for this popup to be reminiscent of the feeling of movie-magic love. I was also reminded of why I love cooking and making events like this possible. Good food truly has the power to bring people together and make unforgettable experiences. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to lead this popup and incredibly thankful for all the people in MINCE who worked so hard to make it possible.