In 2022, three members of the varsity men’s crew team at UChicago took their love for cooking each other elaborate after-school meals to the next level. They founded The Crescent, a weekly pop-up restaurant. Every Wednesday night they offered a five-course dinner to three lucky tables of two. Word spread quickly around campus, and soon their waitlist grew to 200+ students who were eager to snag a seat at the chef’s table.
The founders were inspired by the opportunity to explore new recipes and expose fellow college students to unfamiliar dining experiences and flavors—all at an accessible price point of $45 per person. They never intended to make a profit. At times they lost money, when they refused to compromise the quality of their ingredients or charge their friends more for the experience.
The Crescent grew to include a team of multiple chefs, a pastry chef, and several servers, most of whom graduated from college in 2023 and 2024 and moved to New York City. A counterpart still exists on the campus they left behind—now called Orion—and the new NYC concept is Bluebird (@bluebird.nyc on Instagram).
None of the NYC staff work full time in the restaurant industry, though many of them aspire to run their own restaurants one day. Most of the staff work intense day jobs in finance and consulting, then return home to make themselves beef bourguignon or test out a new hand roll recipe for the next Bluebird pop up.
My friend Gabe became involved through his girlfriend Sylvie, who runs Bluebird alongside fellow UChicago and Crescent grads Alex and Neel. Gabe has hosted the past few events at his apartment in the East Village, and I’m constantly bombarding him with questions about when the next pop up is happening and with requests to bring multiple guests, rather than just one. I won’t shut up about how great Bluebird is, so now all my friends want to try it!
I’d been hearing about The Crescent for years from Gabe, so when we both moved to New York in September 2024, I was lucky enough to dine at the very first Bluebird pop up at Alex’s family home in Brooklyn Heights. Admittedly, at first it felt like I’d stepped into an SNL skit. A staff of 23-year-olds in hair nets and aprons ushered guests to their tables, which were set for two people each and spaced out across the otherwise vacant living room. Once I got over the initial silliness of my friends serving me and explaining each dish in great detail as though they were presenting it to a panel of judges on a cooking show, I was able to enjoy the process and take it close to as seriously as they evidently do (which is part of what makes the Bluebird experience so special).
This first dinner was most in keeping with the style of The Crescent: small dishes of various cuisines coursed out perfectly and plated exquisitely, similar to what you’d see on a tasting menu at a fancy restaurant in a major city that utilizes seasonal produce. Zero corners were cut; even the sourdough was accompanied by three different dollops of homemade butter, organized in order of most classic to most avant-garde (smoked butter!). I’ll never forget the flavor profile of the scallop crudo, which was served with crunchy green apple spears and a citrusy apple vinaigrette. I also loved the snow crab with corn dish; it tasted like the perfect transition from summer into fall. And the dessert! A delicious re-imagination of everyone’s favorite frosted grocery store cookies.
When I next returned in March, Alex’s home in Brooklyn was under construction, so Gabe took over hosting in his apartment, which is a much smaller space both for cooking and for hosting. The team miraculously pulled off six seatings in one day at their seven-course hand roll bar concept. I wasn’t aware until I arrived that all eight guests would be seated together at one table, but the intimacy provided a friendly environment in which to get to know other diners. This meal was narrower in scope but no less delicious. The hand rolls ranged from tuna with soy-cured yolk, crispy shallot, and pickled daikon to pork belly with soy and scallion. The black cocoa dessert with miso and black sesame was the perfect balance of salty and sweet. Again, no details were spared here. Sylvie dashed around the table dishing out mountains of fresh ginger as soon as anyone finished theirs, and warm towels were passed out between dinner and dessert.
Saturday I returned for taco omakase! I was excited to see what tasty inventions would be born from experimenting with this new cuisine. I brought
, coincidentally a Mexican food aficionado, who had been looking forward to dining at Bluebird since I told her about it almost a year ago. The full menu is below; as is the case at every Bluebird dinner, a menu is personalized and printed for each guest to take home as a souvenir. The highlights for me were the battered black cod taco and the hanger steak taco. The meat in both the steak and pork tacos melt in your mouth, and the beet sauce added a sweet creaminess to the steak taco. Bella loved the scallop crudo served in a scallop shell! I am always impressed by Neel’s dessert creations, and his corn tomal was no exception. The corn cake was covered in chocolate and served with a pillowy cinnamon whipped cream and crunchy red chiles.
What’s amazing is that after seven courses I am always the perfect level of satiated. I’m never leaving hungry and in search of a pizza slice for a nightcap or so full that I couldn’t enjoy every bite. And the fact that it’s all for $50 continues to blow my mind. As a friend of Bluebird, I told them that people (myself included) would happily pay more, and maybe we’ll be asked to as the operation continues to grow. But for now they’re content with breaking even and keeping it intimate.
I’ve been invited to and looked into other supper clubs; I look forward to trying them and reviewing them, but Bluebird feels like family and will never be topped. All three Bluebird meals I’ve attended have rivaled the flavors, ingenuity, and service of dining experiences I’ve had at real tasting menu restaurants with one or two Michelin stars. All of the recipes are original. It’s the purest form of passion project: one that exists not for profit, but for fun, and to bring together circles of post-grad foodies to build community in a new city. That being said, as soon as they take this professional, I hope to be their first investor.
So, how do you dine at Bluebird, you may be wondering? I don’t know; ask Gabe. Once Alex’s house is back up and running post-renovations, they hope to host dinners on a monthly basis. You can DM their Instagram and say I put you on, since their first year has been for friends and friends of friends. Bluebird is not on Beli, but if it was, they’d get a 10/10 from me. :)
Just one of the endless perks of being your friend