An eye for detail helps Pamela Timms (above) of Uparwali Chai create an enchanting ambience at her pop-up restaurants

They’re probably your city’s best kept secrets. They pop up out of the blue at random locations and disappear just as suddenly. And if you do manage to wangle an invite to one, consider that you’ve achieved gastronomic nirvana. For pop-up restaurants — a cross between dinner parties and mainstream restaurants — have become quite the exclusive experience for gourmets.

Take Turning Tables, the pop-up dinner affair, where a renowned chef cooks up an exclusive meal for 20 select invitees once a month. It is promoted by Kanika Parab and Mansi Poddar, who run an online weekend guide on underground lifestyle in Mumbai and Pune called Brown Paper Bag (bpbweekend.com) along with co-founder Mansi Poddar.

“The crowd wants a break from the same old eateries and loves this concept. We get about 80-90 applicants for each evening that we host,” says Parab.

Pop-up or roving restaurants are a hit internationally. The Brits call them underground restaurants, the Americans know them as supper clubs, and in Cuba, they are paladares that are likely to spring up in old mansions. They’re typically a here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of space set up by amateur cooks — with dreams of opening their own restaurant.

Now, Indian pop-ups are serving fare with a twist. They’re catering to limited audiences, for one. They’re also offering the experience at incredibly competitive prices — with an opportunity to meet people from different walks of life.

So you can partake of a traditional British high tea with Scottish baker Pamela Timms in Delhi. Timms has been hosting pop-up high tea parties, called Uparwali Chai (that literally means high tea), for the last two years. While, from the terrace of a Bandra home in Mumbai, a young couple in their 20s, Rishaal and Tatiana, have introduced a weekly vegetarian supper club since November 2010.

Parab and Poddar, who launched Turning Tables in December 2010 in Mumbai, define their version of the pop-up as an underground kitchen club, which comes together at a private home. Instead of rookie chefs, they’ve got celebrity chefs from Mumbai’s high-end restaurants rustling up grand five-course meals.

Ammi, Arun Kumar’s brainchild, serves lip-smacking coastal cuisine in Delhi

How tempting is the menu? Take a cue from chef Nikhil Chib of the highly acclaimed Pan-Asian restaurant, Busaba. At one event, Chib began with entrees including aubergine carpaccio and popcorn shrimps. He then built it to a crescendo with the main course comprising dishes like a seasoned steamed fish, Korean Beef Bulgogi and Vietnamese sizzling vegetables among others. “For dessert, we made chocolate fondant and lemon tarts,” says Chib. All this for just Rs 500.

For Jeremie, a French expat who owns a creperie called Suzette in Mumbai, the experience of attending a pop-up in Mumbai was quite unique. “It’s eye opening to see what a professional chef can do with a limited kitchen. Plus, you share dinner with strangers and are bound by this common passion for food,” she says.

If Turning Tables does five-course meals, the mood is way more informal at Rishaal and Tatiana’s weekly supper club, which they call Umami’s (or the fifth taste bud). Rishaal cooks the meals with fresh, organic ingredients and challenges the notion that vegetarianism is boring.

He serves up different cuisines each week. A four to five-course meal here costs between Rs 600 and Rs 900, with some cocktails thrown in per person. “Usually we have a communal punchbowl,” says Rishaal, an expatriate cook from Toronto who met Tatiana, a French event co-ordinator in Rishikesh. The two also offer catering services.

Kanika Parab and Mansi Poddar of Turning Tables get celebrity chefs to rustle up grand five-course meals

Meanwhile, at Uparwali Chai that appears on winter afternoons in Delhi, Timms lays out tables laden with scones, macaroons, tiny cucumber sandwiches, florentines and various teas. She even adds a local touch with gujiya-style chicken curry puffs, pastries filled with gajar ka halwa or even baingan bharta paired with Melba toast.

“Uparwali Chai can come up anywhere — from a restaurant to my roof-top,” says Timms, who creates an ambience with bright tablecloths, menus on handmade paper and dainty teapots. For an entrée to Uparwali Chai, you have to dish out Rs 800 approximately.

Other delights include filmmaker and food lover Arun Kumar’s pop-up restaurant, Ammi — Malayalam for mortar-and-pestle. Kumar serves coastal cuisine winter lunches in bungalows in South Delhi. His signature dishes include Achamma’s Curry (or a grandmother’s meat curry from Kerala) and Kaidha Chakka Pachadi (pineapple cooked in coconut and curd chutney from Kerala). A typical Ammi lunch has six-seven dishes and costs Rs 1,600 with champagne. Kumar’s lunches are such a hit that they became his platform to cater for restaurants like chef Ritu Dalmia’s.

Vegetarianism gets a boost, thanks to Rishaal and Tatiana’s fresh meals cooked with organic products

There are rules that these restaurateurs adhere to, however. One, they don’t advertise the events. They rely on social networks like Facebook and Twitter. “It’s mostly word-of-mouth,” says Timms, who puts up news of Uparwali Chai on her popular blog www.eatanddust.com. Her events are sold out within days and she has a minimum waiting list of 30.

Poddar and Parab diligently screen guests before inviting them. “After all, the dinners are hosted at the homes of our Brown Paper Bag subscribers,” says Parab. They also ask people to come as singles. “Not because it’s a dating platform. We want people to move beyond their own friend circles,” says Parab.

Go ahead, then. Raise a toast to great food at great prices — with fun company to boot.