In hospitality, the journey from idea to guest check is anything but linear. Most chefs typically experience a lengthy period of self-doubt punctuated by rounds of recipe development, as well as a sobering look at the financial realities of operating a restaurant in 2025. The result is either a leap of faith, or a nagging question of: What if?
While the temporary (commonly called pop-up) restaurant hasn’t entirely eliminated those trials and tribulations, it’s quickly—and, as evidenced by some of the buzziest culinary concepts in New York City, Austin, Savannah, and Nashville, often inadvertently—become the most reliable way for chefs to put training wheels on a culinary concept.
After years of operating as a self-proclaimed “cog in a machine” working in restaurants around New York City, the lure of cooking on a smaller, more creative scale drew Sunny Lee to start a roving banchan concept with “one burner and an oven” inside her apartment, friends’ kitchens, and eventually a kiosk at the (now-shuttered) People’s wine bar in Essex Market. She calls the feeling nothing short of electric: “it felt like when you see things in nature that just click into place, like, a rock perfectly forms inside the base of a tree—I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to keep doing this.’”
As Banchan by Sunny took off and questions began to form around the concept’s future, Lee worried that the stress of hiring, making payroll, building out a kitchen and dining room, and essentially doing “everything but cook” would ruin the magic—so a long-term nomadic future was the only way forward. Through the pop-ups, she met Grant Reynolds (the owner of Parcelle, a wine retailer with two wine bars) who approached her with a proposal to partner, and crucially a 400-square foot “gem of a space” in Chinatown that Lee had been unwittingly training to run a restaurant in. The rest is history, and Sunn’s (whose wine list is overseen by Reynolds) routinely has a line of eager guests trailing out of the door.
“[Pop-ups] are such a perfect environment to be creative because you’re breaking through [physical] barriers all the time. You’re forced to have to make decisions out of confinement, and I find that that’s always been the best times to create… I’m super intimidated by large, spacious environments,” Lee says, laughing.
After years of operating as a self-proclaimed “cog in a machine” working in restaurants around New York City, the lure of cooking on a smaller, more creative scale drew Sunny Lee to start a roving banchan concept with “one burner and an oven” inside her apartment, friends’ kitchens, and eventually a kiosk at the (now-shuttered) People’s wine bar in Essex Market. She calls the feeling nothing short of electric: “it felt like when you see things in nature that just click into place, like, a rock perfectly forms inside the base of a tree—I was like, ‘Oh my God, I want to keep doing this.’”
As Banchan by Sunny took off and questions began to form around the concept’s future, Lee worried that the stress of hiring, making payroll, building out a kitchen and dining room, and essentially doing “everything but cook” would ruin the magic—so a long-term nomadic future was the only way forward. Through the pop-ups, she met Grant Reynolds (the owner of Parcelle, a wine retailer with two wine bars) who approached her with a proposal to partner, and crucially a 400-square foot “gem of a space” in Chinatown that Lee had been unwittingly training to run a restaurant in. The rest is history, and Sunn’s (whose wine list is overseen by Reynolds) routinely has a line of eager guests trailing out of the door.
“[Pop-ups] are such a perfect environment to be creative because you’re breaking through [physical] barriers all the time. You’re forced to have to make decisions out of confinement, and I find that that’s always been the best times to create… I’m super intimidated by large, spacious environments,” Lee says, laughing.
When Chef Brendan Yancy and his team at Austin Oyster Co., started popping up around the city of Austin in 2020, they weren’t expecting to lay the foundation of their first brick-and-mortar restaurant, which will open at the end of this year in Austin. But over the past five years of hosting private events, as well as taking over bars, restaurants, and even a local winery, it became clear that the concept—to showcase the versatility of raw oysters from New England and Canada, and experimenting with dishes like lobster and crab rolls, grilled oysters, white clam pizza, and more—had legs. “We were selling out pop-ups and [people] often asked, ‘Where’s your restaurant?’” he says.
Yancy says that the relationships he and his team grew with the oyster farmers, wholesalers, customers, and, of course, investors have been tantamount to being able to open a permanent location. “That’s five years of learning what has and has not worked well and of growing a customer base and a brand,” he says. “We have been able to refine our sourcing and our partners, and dial in what we want to offer to customers.
Dialing in dishes over several years has also been a key part of the pop-up’s promise for Natasha Gaskill, who, in 2024, opened a brick-and-mortar location for her all-day café concept, Sixby. In the previous year, she ran a stall at the Forsyth Farmer’s Market in Savannah, Georgia selling breads and a product mix that closely mirrors the menu now at the café. “I would bring bone broth down there in a coffee cambro, and I would sell it in 8-ounce cups,” she recalls. “The breakfast sandwich that we serve at Sixby went through some growing pains down at that market.”
Most importantly, the pop-up’s popularity gave Gaskill added confidence in her own taste and palate.
“Every Saturday, rügbrød was the first bread that sold out. It is a very dense, seeded rye loaf from Denmark that I grew up eating. I love it, always have, but it was a surprise how much our guests loved it,” she says. “I had thought it would be a tough sell, but I was wrong. We make it once a week at [the café] to a sold-out reception every week. We serve it daily on our Sixby platter and on our salmon tartine.”
The ephemeral nature of pop-ups also scratches a very specific, fairly fresh itch caused by social media. It’s one thing to make an 8 p.m. reservation for two at a restaurant by hopping onto Resy or OpenTable, but getting to try a hot dog that will only be available at a takeaway window from the hours of 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. for just two weeks that you found out about from your feed? Talk about an adrenaline rush.
For Julio Hernandez of Nashville’s Maiz de la Vida, setting up an Instagram account in 2023 was, at least at first, a no-cost way to spread the word about his hand-pressed tortillas and cheesy, indulgent “quesabirria” tacos designed for dunking into bowls of consommé. The dish quickly snowballed into virality and became the restaurant’s calling card. That cult-following led Hernandez to an appearance on Phil Rosenthal’s hit Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil, and to accolades in local and national press, including a nomination as Semi-Finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast. In 2024, Maiz de la Vida opened its first brick-and-mortar space in Nashville’s Gulch neighborhood thanks to a compelling offer from a taco truck regular.
“We learned early that consistency was key…because you never know who is ordering takeout,” he says.
The ephemeral nature of pop-ups also scratches a very specific, fairly fresh itch caused by social media. It’s one thing to make an 8 p.m. reservation for two at a restaurant by hopping onto Resy or OpenTable, but getting to try a hot dog that will only be available at a takeaway window from the hours of 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. for just two weeks that you found out about from your feed? Talk about an adrenaline rush.
For Julio Hernandez of Nashville’s Maiz de la Vida, setting up an Instagram account in 2023 was, at least at first, a no-cost way to spread the word about his hand-pressed tortillas and cheesy, indulgent “quesabirria” tacos designed for dunking into bowls of consommé. The dish quickly snowballed into virality and became the restaurant’s calling card. That cult-following led Hernandez to an appearance on Phil Rosenthal’s hit Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil, and to accolades in local and national press, including a nomination as Semi-Finalist for the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Southeast. In 2024, Maiz de la Vida opened its first brick-and-mortar space in Nashville’s Gulch neighborhood thanks to a compelling offer from a taco truck regular.
“We learned early that consistency was key…because you never know who is ordering takeout,” he says.
