Apr 21, 2022
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Spoons: Playlists for the kitchen
“I’m always listening to music that suits my current mood or what I'm doing. ‘What genres of music do you listen to?’ is a horrible question because who even listens exclusively to a certain genre?! And if you do, you shouldn't! Open yourself out to a lot of different things. Within the individual playlists I've included different types of music, different genres, different moods, and stuff – use them as a tool to take you through all different activities.
Playlist #1 Starting your shift
So this first one is for when you get in and you're looking through deliveries and stuff, getting organised. You're coming from a place where your body's just starting up, you’re trying to get your head in the zone. Like a warm-up, I guess almost. So it's just picking the pace up. But also not too aggressively. You don’t want to immediately turn on techno music. It’s more just like, ‘we're vibing in and we're going to start this together.’
Playlist #2 Prepping, cooking
Then we’re onto the next phase: prep. You’re getting into the focus zone, picking up the pace. You want to get yourself hyped up so you can work more intensely, so the BPM goes up a little bit. You’re building yourself up for service, but it can go on into service too – it can play through the whole night in the kitchen behind the scenes.
Playlist #3 Family Meal
Whereas this next playlist – that’s more front-of-house, more customer-facing. Last night I had PLAYLIST 2 playing in the kitchen, but this one-playing out front for the guests. The playlist that I play at Spoon supper clubs is always mostly Indonesian music – it’s important to me. It gives that 360 Indonesian elements, but also a lot of the people who come to my supper clubs are quite new to Indonesian food. I’d love to taste Indonesian food for the first time, that must be an incredible experience! So I try to amplify that feeling by introducing people to music from my culture as well.
Playlist #4 Clean down, wind down
This brings us to the final playlist, which is the clean down. You’ve been through this hectic, chaotic night. You’re so busy and you just want to wind down a little while you take the place down. You’re mopping, you’re packing up. You want to ease it up a little and get yourself ready to go home. And sum up a beautiful night, I guess.”
You can listen to Rahel’s playlists here and follow Spoons here. The next Spoons pop-up is on 15th May at Cave Cuvee (Bethnal Green).
Images by Hassan Saif