and you think, ‘That’s incredible.
I would love it if that was in London today’”.
This particular historical anecdote
became the basis for their Architectural
Punchbowl in 2009, where they flooded
a London building with four tonnes of
Courvoisier punch, creating a lake that guests could row across
and also have a drink from.
Although their boundary-pushing, food-based installations
have been compared to molecular gastronomy, Bompas says their
aim is simple: “To surprise, delight and amaze. Although it may
seem we’re marvellously complex and sophisticated, we think that
the things that delighted our forefathers hundreds of years ago
will still delight us today.”
T H E
P R O D U C E R S
Meet the
Jellymongers
Bompas and Parr tell
Laura Martin
why
they love playing with their food
PHOTOS
CARL PALMER, ANN CHARLOTT OMMEDAL, NATHAN
PASK, THOMAS BROWN
ILLUSTRATION
EMMA RIOS
“
what we do
has a real end of days in Rome feel to it,” says Sam
Bompas, half of London-based food-fantasy duo Bompas and Parr.
“
Like a bacchanalian orgy.”
That’s certainly one way of putting it. Over the past few years,
he and his friend Harry Parr have shot to fame with their wacky
and spectacular culinary events. Part chefs, part architects and
part food scientists, the pair – dubbed real-life Willy Wonkas –
have been behind some of the most talked about food happenings
in the UK.
Scratch and sniff cinema, a chocolate climbing wall and a walk-
through, breathable cocktail – not to mention this year’s cake-
based crazy golf on the roof of London’s Selfridges department
store – are just a few of the highlights of their culinary wizardry.
Starting out in 2007, they launched on to the scene by creating a
cityscape of famous buildings made of jelly (“because it’s sweet,
it wobbles and you can make it look like stuff”), by 2012 they were
clocking up more than 10 events a year, with clients including
Stella McCartney, Mercedes-Benz and Hendrick’s Gin.
Fans marvel at their futuristic thinking, but in fact the pair say
they draw much
of their inspiration
from the past,
particularly old
tomes found at the
London Library. “It’s
extraordinary,” says
Bompas. “You encounter these weird and wonderful books. On
my desk now I have one called
The Belly Book of Dinner: Memoirs
of a Stomach
,
which was written in the mid-1830s from the
perspective of a stomach.
“
For one project, we read about a British admiral called
Edward Russell, who had a six-day party where he only stopped
once when it started raining, as he didn’t want his massive punch-
bowl fountain of booze diluted. You hear about something like that
“
Although it may seemwe’re marvellously
complex and sophisticated, we think that the
things that delighted our forefathers hundreds
of years ago will still delight us today”
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