Tennis whites were swapped for black tie at a Crouch End sports club on Saturday night, as 50 members sat down on the courts to a four-course dinner cooked by a MasterChef finalist — all in aid of a long-overdue clubhouse revamp.
Highgate Cricket & Lawn Tennis Club laid a single long table across its grass courts, split down the middle by a tennis net, where diners in evening gowns and suits tucked in while a tuxedoed string quintet played Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.
The chef for the night was Antos Tytko, a 29-year-old club member who reached the last four of MasterChef in June and has just walked away from a career in banking to cook full time. Drawing on the presentation skills honed on the BBC show, he built each of the four courses around one of tennis’s Grand Slam tournaments, with dishes served on tennis rackets — the evening opening with Vegemite and cheddar scrolls while a pork shoulder slow-cooked behind the scenes.
The career switch is a familiar one for MasterChef alumni. The BBC competition has launched plenty of contestants from office jobs into professional kitchens, with finalists often going on to run pop-ups, supper clubs and restaurants of their own. For Tytko, cooking a charity feast for the club that backed him is the latest step on that road.
The music matched the ambition of the menu. Member and former chair Susan Paterson welcomed arrivals with a jazz performance, before a surprise appearance from fellow member Thomas Gould — former leader of the Aurora Orchestra and the Britten Sinfonia — who brought fellow musicians along to form the quintet.
“I love this club and the community that surrounds it, much of which centres around our clubhouse,” Tytko said. “I want future members to have the same opportunity to build the friendships and memories that this club has given me.”
“I love being able to show my imaginative and slightly silly side,” he added.
The evening was organised by volunteers to kickstart a fundraising campaign for the clubhouse, which has not had a makeover in more than 50 years. Tennis and cricket members joined forces to make it happen: players paused their matches to carry tables onto the court, a neighbouring club lent chairs, and guests rolled up their sleeves to help plate up.
Club chair Liz Sich said: “Our club is all about its members and it was great to see our tennis and cricket players on court in their finery under a full moon on a beautiful September evening. So many people volunteered to make this a success and kickstart our clubhouse campaign.”
The £1,000 raised on the night is the first step towards a bigger project to create a clubhouse where members can come together for generations. Organisers are already planning further fundraising events, including some that will be open to the public.
For the club’s members, the night was about far more than fine dining. From the jazz welcome to the Vivaldi finale, almost every part of the evening was cooked, played or carried by members themselves — a fitting launch for a campaign to give their shared clubhouse a new lease of life.
The feast adds another date to a busy food calendar across the capital. Londoners can also look forward to a free three-day food tasting taking over Shoreditch this October, while diners elsewhere in the city can claim a free bowl of beef noodles next week. And with the UK’s first train station food hall set to open at London Victoria, the capital’s appetite for novel dining experiences shows no sign of slowing.
For Crouch End, the tennis-club feast underlines the area’s love of a good table. The north London neighbourhood has long punched above its weight for independent cafés, restaurants and food shops — and on Saturday night its sports clubs showed they can hold their own in the kitchen too.
