This Saturday from 3-4 p.m. at the Ormewood Park Maker’s Festival, pop-up restaurant platform Punk Foodie founder Sam Flemming will moderate a discussion with former pop-up chef and TKO Korean restaurant founder Lino Yi and Round Trip Brewing founder Craig Mycoskie on how the worlds of craft breweries and pop-up dining represent not only a defining force in the food and beverage scene but also reflect the shifting foodways of the city, the South, and the country.
In social science, foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food and refer to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.
Flemming will open the workshop with a short presentation on the ‘state of the pop-up industry’ with facts, figures and stories. For example, in the last 12 months, Punk Foodie tracked 9952 pop-up events in the greater Atlanta area, including over118 pop-ups from pop-up events from Bravewojtek (one of the most active pop-up chefs on the scene) alone. Also worthy of note: of the 21 pop-ups making the greatest impact on the scene according to Punk Foodie analysis, 17 are owned by people of color and 10 are women owned.
Flemming will also provide examples of chefs and dishes that will support the suggestion that pop-ups are artists who are providing depictions of the new South not with paint and a canvas but with dishes that are interpretations and creations coming from their personal lived experience, often as first or second-generation immigrants and/or multicultural backgrounds.
Following the presentation, Yi and Mycoskie and Flemming will discuss their own experiences with pop-ups, how breweries are playing a key role in the scene and the overall commercial and artistic connection between breweries and pop-ups.
Before and after the session, workshop participants can try for themselves dishes from 15 pop-ups who will be serving at the festival and try Phiner Bởck beer, a collaboration between Round Trip Brewing and restaurant (and former pop-up) Phở Cue.