Photo story: MUVs ALLDAY
My mother’s best friend was a Tupperware lady, and she was a good one. My Mum never left a party without a Tupperware tub. We'd open our chest freezer and we’d find it tightly packed with Tupperware filled with curries.
When I left for college, I’d be dispatched with a crateful of curries, packed solid into Tupperware containers. After a session of gossiping and studying in the library, and when other students would be warming up their tuna pasta bakes, I’d be prising out a rock-solid frozen chicken curry from my Tupperware container.
Even after I had left college, finally moved out of home, and got married, I was still being sent home with tubs filled with curries. Looking back, this felt like a rite of passage.
These were the stories I shared with Krish Puwanarajah, co-founder of MUVs ALLDAY. Those recollections occupy a happy space in my mind. For Krish, they helped get a fledgling business off the ground.
The original plan for MUVs ALLDAY was to create a space to enjoy brunch and sample a menu where Sri Lankan and modern British food could co-exist.
With the onset of a worldwide pandemic and successive lockdowns, Krish and Joey (partner and co-founder) pivoted, started selling their curries in jars at market stalls and set up a sustainable micro-delivery service.
As Krish explains: “We never intended to do deliveries as such. It was only because it was COVID and locked down. We thought how do we get these dishes out? Get people to try a few things.”
The delivery service started when there was a shortage of eggs. Krish and Joey ordered 90 eggs from a farm, split them with two other households and dispatched jars of curries to get feedback on the recipes and the quantities. This grew into a network of deliveries with people receiving jars of curries.
Using glass jars to contain the curries was a purposeful move and a throwback to those memories. People could return the jars for reuse. Though not the most cost-effective, it was sustainable and those jars saved 250kg worth of plastic.
As the world started to open up, people ventured back to dining out, and the jar delivery service started to quieten, Krish talked through their next move: “ We were thinking, how do we kind of carry on serving the food without having a space and without doing deliveries? So we thought we could do pop-ups. We did a test pop-up in Clapham at the Social Pantry.” This allowed Krish and Joey to build out a pop-up concept as if they were going to roll it out into other pop-up spaces.
Then with a permanent space in Tooting secured and the blueprint for supper clubs in hand, they launched the MUVs ALLDAY supper clubs for an initial two-month run. Krish and Joey have been hosting supper clubs for over a year.
The MUVs ALLDAY supper clubs are a success, especially the private supper clubs, where Krish and Joey will host you and up to 15 friends.
The food reminds me of our big family gatherings. The Sri Lankan British menu works, moving from a seasonal wild garlic pesto and locally-made sourdough to Sri Lankan curries, served on Sri Lankan tableware (a lovely touch).
Sustainability and provenance run deep for MUVs ALLDAY: the single estate olive oil to the carrots grated for sambol to wine sourced from POC women-led vineyards.
MUVs ALLDAY is the place to feed your hungry soul and tummy.