Birds Eye's brilliant pay-by-picture pop-up restaurant

Birds Eye has created a unique and rather brilliant online campaign to promote its Inspirations food range.

Over the past couple of days, Birds Eye has set up a 'Picture House' pop-up restaurant along Grape Street, London.  The unusual thing is that diners pay for their meals not with cash or credit but with pictures of their food posted on social media with the hashtag #BirdsEyeInspirations.  Diners gets a free meal, while Birds Eye get real-time and user-generated promotion and feedback - a win-win situation.  I was lucky enough to get on the guest list and visited the pop-up for lunch today.

With each diner presented with an iPad, I had a choice of three dishes:

1. 'Chicken Inspirations' - with garlic and herb sauce, crushed peas, olive oil poached asparagus and romano pepper gremolata.
2. 'Fish Chargrills' - with sunblushed tomato, basil and oregano, roasted potatoes, wilted spinach and buttered brown shrimp. 
3. 'Rice Fusions' - with smoked aubergine, goats cheese and soft herb fritters.

Fish Chargrills.

Being a seafood lover, I naturally opted for the Fish Chargrills, prepared in the open kitchen.  Flaky, moist, well-seasoned and neatly presented, the dish could fit well on the menu of a more well-established restaurant.

Side shot of Fish Chargrills.

Open kitchen.

To my delight, dessert was available too.  Vanilla ice cream, crumble, strawberries and passion fruit - there was literally nothing not to like with this and it rounded off a fantastic midweek lunch.  

Sadly, the pop-up restaurant will now be moving away from London and will be setting up in Manchester and Leeds in June.  If they're set up as well as the London one, then I'm sure diners will have a great time.  Let's hope more food companies promote their products this way in the future!

Inside the restaurant.