Ridley’s, a temporary dining experience in Dalston, is a project by Atelier Chan Chan and The Decorators. This group of architects-designers-artists- transformed an exposed yet derelict void in Ridley Road market, into a podium for outdoor exhibitionist eating.
The site, which was historically used by the market traders to have their lunch and watch over their stalls, faces onto the market and is exposed on 3 sides lending itself as a viewing point, a place to watch the market and be watched. The 2 storey structure plays with this notion of spectacle to create a stage for the markets produce in the form of a choreographed perfomative space and dining experience.
Diners are led to a communal table high above the market. Meals prepared in the ground floor kitchen, the hub of exchange and production, are raised by a mechanical table up to the first floor. This scenographic journey emphasises the vertical transformation of the raw food at market level to the cooked meals at the elevated podium above.
The two-storey structure rises above the stalls, housing a new kind of market food initiative. Market produce is exchanged for a meal if you’re having lunch or £15 if you’re looking for dinner (includes your dinner and a £10 food shopping voucher for use at the market ). A lineup of guest chefs is creating daily menus from market produce only.
The temporary summer installation is a means of demonstrating the kind of activities that could be created to make the life of this market sustainable and is an opportunity to re-imagine the possibilities for the regeneration of the area.
Each week, we host a lunch and dinner from Wednesday to Saturday. Lunch is an informal event with t he hope of feeding 40 people. The dinner is a sit down meal around one communal table of 16 people. Our guests are a mix of the market traders, passerby’s and invited people from all over London.
"We are excited by phenomenological architectures which focus on user-experience and the unexpected. For us, Ridley's is about creating a theatrical or spectacular experience and space for elevated open-air dining. By playfully engagibg with the surrounding market to create a curtained 'high-table' for Ridley Road's produce, it ultimately subverts a pretty unspecacular piece of derelict land into something fun."- Zoe Chan, Atelier ChanChan
"At Ridley's, we are using food as a driver to create links with our community. We see this project as a theatre play that will unfold spontaneously over the course of the three weeks. We've designed the restaurant as a scenario where different actors- chefs, designers, afro-tango dancers, market traders- will come into play and contribute for what will hopefully become a collaborative stage to celebrate exchange." The Decorators
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