How Magpie Reinvented Trolley Service

Perhaps it’s just misty-eyed nostalgia, but there’s something infinitely appealing about dining from a trolley service. It calls to mind the Golden Age of air travel, when carts arrived laden with hors d’oeuvres on sticks, cream cakes and garish fruit platters instead of microwaved cheese toasties. Or cocktail hour in the 1970s, when a gin from your neighbour’s bar-on-wheels was the only way to kick off proceedings. And then, of course, there’s the dim sum trolley. The silver-cart service that used to be at the heart of Yum Cha, bringing towers of steaming bamboo baskets to the table for hungry diners to choose from.

These days though, the dim sum trolley is a dying staple of Chinese establishments. In London’s Chinatown, Cantonese restaurant New World Chinese claims its dim sum trolley service is the last in the capital. Which is why it’s perhaps a surprise that Magpie, the new restaurant from east London’s Pidgin, have chosen to resurrect it. It’s worth noting that this is a Modern British restaurant – there’s not a dumpling in sight. So what’s their motive?

It’s more than just a gimmick, owners James Ramsden and Sam Herlihy told Something Curated: “A trolley service is a really nice way to eat, especially if it’s more than just table-side theatre.” They saw serving by both trolley and tray as a way of solving the downsides of an increasingly divisive and prolific sharing plate culture. “Sometimes the food all comes out at once. Or you don’t know quite what you’re going to get, so you have to divide three tiny croquettes between two people.” Instead, diners can cop a look at the options before fully committing. It makes eating out feel rather like online dating.

There’s certainly less negotiating a cluttered table full of tepid small plates. And you can enjoy a slower, more relaxed feed. Ramsden and Herlihy admit the idea was heavily influenced by State Bird Provisions, the San Francisco restaurant where chef-proprietors Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza have fed the masses from trolleys since 2011. “We were inspired after a visit, and realised that it really adds to the dining experience,” Ramsden and Herlihy told us.

They’re not wrong. For diners who like to linger, and don’t have discreet gossip to comb over with their companion, it certainly turns a meal into an experience. There are of course a few considerations. It helps to know your dining companions and their taste buds well. Each selection of dishes arrives like a proposition, lovingly described by the waiting staff so you’ll eat happily if you have the conviction to bypass the ceremony and pick what you really want. You’ll eat more harmoniously with the certainty that your date feels the same way as you about pork trotter or pain perdu.

It’s a shame that the trolley at Magpie isn’t more evocative of those used in actual dim sum service. Ramsden and Herlihy went for something wooden and rather clunky in comparison to the traditional metal carts; the sort that look like they might take your elbows off as they whizz by. But Magpie was never going to echo the loud, buzzy service of dim sum at 5pm on a Sunday. This is where you come for a little spectacle, where dishes are handled with a care afforded to winking jewellery on a TV shopping channel. Where the bathroom is soundtracked with an operatic thunderstorm, and umami-laced morsels come arrive on ceramic plates that beg to be photographed. This is a trolley service as you’ve never known it.

Words by Stevie Mackenzie-Smith | Images courtesy of Magpie