We had such a blast celebrating the birthday of Michelle (one of Chantelle’s oldest friends) a couple of weeks ago, with the big birthday bash taking place at the very aptly named, nondescript Food Jams base in Woodstock, Cape Town.
Operating in some form or the other since 2010, Food Jams is the brain child of the fun, energetic and foodtastic Jade De Waal. The concept is simple: Gather a group of people together for a team build, supper club, party, or social jam, pick a theme and arrive on the day in order to be randomly paired off in groups and receive your specified dish’s recipe, all of which forms part of the special menu that has been cooked up by Jade herself.
With music blaring from the background, and plenty of drinks available from the cash bar, the groups then simultaneously get to work at their already prepped workstations in order to whip up a gargantuan meal that consists of all your just made dishes – all set to be devoured by the group once the small house gets rearranged to accommodate one long dinner table.
As you can imagine, the entire evening is an exercise in controlled, fun chaos! (For the record, I joined Andri and together we made empanadas – which actually turned out quite nice despite the fact we somehow missed a lot of steps from the recipe, not to mention completely changed the suggested cooking style!)
Pro Tip: A good idea, as demonstrated by the main party group, is definitely to rock up to your food jam on a hired party bus. After all, the evening is pretty much guaranteed to be one heck of a good party!
Bonus: To get an even better idea about what Food Jams is all about, One Dog Chicken produced this great little feature hosted on Vimeo:
Also, because I’m not strictly a Capetonian in that I get lost in Cape Town, a map.
Related Link: Food Jams