On Monday, Dec. 9 at the Carl A. Fields Center, students gathered to enjoy a small-scale, gourmet dining service organized and hosted by P Pop Up — a club that serves a comprehensive, formalized fine dining experience for undergraduates each semester.
Co-presidents of P Pop Up, Yizhen Wang ’26 and Sungmin Kim ’27, both described the service as a space for cooking enthusiasts to experiment and innovate the culinary arts.
"We're exploring cooking more creatively, and more of like a hobby rather than a task," Wang explained.
The shared passion for cooking is what brings everyone in P Pop Up together and makes it an enjoyable experience for its members, turning individual creativity and inspirations into dishes that are ultimately served to others. Trying new flavors, testing culinary ideas, and creating gourmet food, the group also explores cooking as an art.
“It’s a space for students to just be creative, explore new ideas, and just come to cook things that you like and cook new things, learn new things, and share ideas with people,” said Kim.
Throughout the service that evening, the club’s members — all donning black attire like waiters at a high-end restaurant — frequently refilled our cups with mason jars of water. At the start of each course, they came out from the kitchen in an orderly, single-file line to serve us our tasting-menu portions of food. All of this made the night resemble a moderately-relaxed version of fine dining.
The seven courses served that evening consisted of a series of warm, hearty dishes that complemented the frigid, windy winter. The dishes were prepared in collaboration with cooking influencer Steven Gao, a graduate of the Institute of Culinary Education who now works as a chef at Per Se, a three-star Michelin restaurant in New York City.
Seared lamb for the meat dish.
Russell Fan / The Daily Princetonian
From the tender cuts of savory lamb and a velvety, buttery piece of Atlantic striped sea bass to the creamy parsnip soup paired with the chewy, albeit slightly dense, sourdough focaccia, all the dishes exhibited a multitude of taste, texture, and scent that made each bite fulfilling and extremely appetizing. I was always surprised at the complexity of flavors accompanied by each bite or sip, whether it be the subtle undertone of sweetness in the brown butter emulsion, the slight richness from the drizzle of olive oil in the soup, or hint of sharpness from the sprinkle of ricotta on the roasted squash salad.
Culinary ingenuity informed every dish, such as the canapé starter which was a thin chip of fried nori tuile topped off with fresh scallop tartare, laced with creme fraiche and pepper aioli, and dolloped with a sizable spoonful of caviar. The combination of the soft, slightly salty scallop and caviar with the crispiness of the nori chip made for a satisfying dose of umami flavor — a testament to the great level of detail dedicated to preparing and cooking each ingredient in a dish for an ultimately cohesive taste.
Seafood-based canapé or starting appetizer.
Russell Fan / The Daily Princetonian
Keeren Setokusumo ’26, one of the attendees at the pop up service, remarked on the unique experience of that night.
“Each course [showcased] the thought, effort and personality of the chefs in their dish,” Setokusumo in a written comment to The Daily Princetonian.
Setokusumo is a former staff Features writer for the ‘Prince.’
“We normally start off prepping for a service by throwing around ideas for themes,” Wang said.
With every pop-up service revolving around a certain concept, this semester’s theme centered on the wintry season and the coziness of the indoors. The club then discusses the menu, including the number of courses, types of dishes that should be made, and ingredients that should be utilized. Narrowing down the options for a course involves logistical planning, such as ingredient availability and budget restriction, as well as artistic considerations about developing cohesive, complementary flavors.
After finalizing what the courses and dishes would look like, preparation for the actual service proceeds. This involves creating samplers of the envisioned menu to taste test among the club’s members, adjusting their culinary experimentations as needed.
“We kind of refer to cookbooks, [and] what we see on the Internet … and also like our own experiences [eating] at different restaurants,” Wang described regarding the inspirations and resources that the club draws on to create unique dishes.
Kim added that in the past, like with Gao, they had “experienced, professional chefs help with the [menu] ideation.”
This professional guidance — advising the group on their ideas for flavor profiles and combinations — is something the club wants to incorporate in more of its activities.
P Pop Up has a broader goal of branching out into more learning-focused endeavors for beginner cooks and extending their campus outreach. According to Wang, the workshops that they are planning to host are intended to enhance the cooking skills of the club’s members, as well as attract other students who want to learn more about the culinary arts.
Through these workshops, P Pop Up seeks to achieve a more affordable and accessible environment for students to experience fine dining. According to Kim, by introducing a free-of-charge fine dining service to students, P Pop Up hopes to break down the barriers and misconceptions of what a fine dining experience is.
However, the club is more than just sharing ideas about cooking and developing new dishes for a one-time dining service. It is also about forming an intimate community of cooking hobbyists that is passionate about working to create culinary experiences for students on campus.
“P Pop Up is the only space on campus for students to explore cooking hobbies,” stated the club’s Treasurer Mary Ma ’26.
Ma is the creative director for the ‘Prince.’
Spiced carrot cake for dessert.
Russell Fan / The Daily Princetonian
As I savored my last bite of the moist spiced carrot cake and my final sip of the sweet eggnog, the success of the club’s culinary artistry, creating delectable delicacies, left a lasting impression. By giving a glimpse of fine dining to students, P Pop Up is lending itself to reinventing what gourmet food should look like and how it should manifest in an accessible form for a campus setting like Princeton.
Russell Fan is an associate editor for The Prospect at the ‘Prince.’ He can be reached at rf4125@princeton.edu, or on Instagram @russell__fan.
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