Mat Follas
Kai We Care - popup restaurant for NZ quake

Twitter is an amazing and powerful tool for our times. I've seen statements like this said a number of times but hadn't realised till Monday night how true this can be.

One single tweet from me and approx 300 replies came flooding in within a few minutes.

A short conversation with Dave Ahern aka @corkgourmetguy, a blogger and fellow 'mature' newby chef … went along the lines of (and I'm paraphrasing):

• D You doing anything for NZ Earthquake ?
• M Running an auction for dinner/overnight, not sure what else to do
• D Popup restaurant ?
• M Too far from London and not enough time to handle as much as I want to, keep asking if anyone is so I can help out
• D I run events for a living (or did), how about it? We could do a 30 cover dinner with our contacts alone
• M Why not? I'll ask twitter and see what feedback I get

matkiwi Mat Follas It's been suggested a popup fundraiser restaurant for nz earthquake ... London ... 4 or 5th April ... thoughts? Volunteers? Location?

What a response ! Literally hundreds of people offered their help immediately and lots more offering services and goodies.
Thank you all so much … I can't say that enough.

So its starting to take shape

Kai we care Kai = Māori for food ... the name is a pun on Kiwi care ...
@KaiWeCare is the twitter account
website http://kaiwecare.weebly.com/
email Mailto:KaiWeCare@gmail.com

This is now somewhat bigger than envisiged (that's English understatement for you).
We have a whole bunch of seriously good chefs including Michelin starred on board to run a course each. Some you might know and some will be better known to chefs and their local communities. It will be great to get a few TV faces on board but just as fun for us to experience some of the lesser well known but exceptional chefs we have in the UK.

For example we will have the lovely Lisa Faulkner (Celeb Masterchef winner) and the less well known Michelin starred Russell Brown from Sienna down here in Dorset. There's a few from Masterchef and The Restaurant on board and a whole bunch of exceptional chefs, more to come.
Harass your favourite chefs to offer to help, its a Monday so most of them will be available ! The best chefs we can get will make this an amazing event and help with the right ticket and auction prices … this is a fundraiser first and foremost, but we all want it to be an evening to be remembered too.

Lots of wine offers, great ! I'm thinking a wine company per course to sponser and a few special bottles for the Auction.

Auction prizes: a number of meals, training courses and wines … please keep them coming!

Bloggers and twitters I need your help to sell tickets, We will need to source ingredients free or at cost and lots and lots of publicity so we can maximise ticket sales and auction values. I know you'll help and please bear with us as the above is all the planning we've been able to do so far.

Importantly
Date: 4 April 2011 - put this in your diary now please ! (as a nice antidote to Mothers day it has been said ...)

Location: London (several sites probable/possible at the moment, looking for size, kitchen and locations, hopefully finalize asap but please do suggest more)

Tickets: £ to be agreed (suggestions?)

Sale method: Ebay or direct from the email account

Numbers: 100 planned

Who's doing what ? In rough terms I'm organising the chefs, Dave the location and auction and John running the twitter and email accounts and day to day … conveniently he has arranged to be unemployed while we're organising the event.

Please retweet/email/blog/copy this letter and let your friends and family know.

More to come soon, Mat