From breathable gin and tonic clouds to the alcoholic flooding of a listed  Mayfair building, Sam Bompas and Harry Parr have stolen the hearts of many by redefining the concept of food and drink and so blurring the line between food, architecture and modern art. Jessica Moorhouse speaks to Sam Bompas, one half of the extraordinary taste, smell and hearing sensation about all things wobbly and what happens when it goes wrong.

Former Etonian old boys, B&P stumbled upon the idea to resurrect Jelly from the abyss of the long forgotten four years ago. Fresh out of university, feeling somewhat bright eyed and bushy tailed, they fancied a fun hobby to do on the summer weekends of 2007; so they attempted to set up a stall in Borough Market. Due to their twenty-something just larking around appearances, the wings of their business adventure were clipped soon before it even had chance to fly. ‘But by doing so, we accidently stumbled across the jelly business. There is nothing that can delight more than the style of a wobbly, quivering jelly’ explains Sam, as I try my hardest to keep a straight face. ‘The family thought it was pretty absurd until we hit the big time by being caricatured in Private Eye’.

Spearheading the renaissance of English Jelly might have seemed like a fun prospect to B&P but their families concerns were more than justifiable. Given that Harry was a trained architect and Sam was a researcher for a global financing marketing company; adding ‘jelly monger’ to the list of their qualifications might be classed as borderline insane to many, but for Sam the philosophy was simple, ‘this is a whole heap more fun.’ It’s as if his life has been leading up to this point for years. ‘I was a researcher for the MP Simon Hughes’, which he describes as ‘grand preparation for the absurd. MPs do a lot for their constituents. One week we even organised an exorcism for someone living in the constituency’.

Absurd being the key word here, the prospect of being able to astonish with food has always been a childhood dream for Sam, which is why the sudden shift in careers seemed plausible to him. He describes a trip to ‘Medieval Times’ on a family holiday to America as his most ‘formative food experience’. His eyes practically glaze over as he describes in explicit detail the way the show intertwined forms and factor making food a spectacle; I let him lose himself for a couple of minutes as it is obvious he is blissfully reminiscing on the magic he felt that day. After a few moments pass, I try and nudge him back into the conversation we just lost by asking what inspires him nowadays. After five minutes of intelligent waffle he finally draws to a conclusion by expounding on ‘casino architecture’. ‘They use every trick in the book to give people a full sensory assault via that fabric of the building…They pipe in extra oxygen to make you feel sharp. We tried this at a meal once with a 70kg oxygen tank instead of coffee but it blasted out so powerfully that all the paintings fell off the wall.’

At this point in the interview I realise no one else could have single-handedly brought back jelly from the culinary wilderness quite like B&P because quite frankly, there is no way anyone could match up to the same level of intelligence when it comes to knowing all things wonderful and wacky. In the space of half an hour Sam has bounced from the topic of Les Dinners de Gala, Salvador Dali’s cookbook. ‘It’s pretty wild’ he drawls ‘Dali shows you how to cross milk fed snails, stuffed peacocks and aphrodisiacs for a seductive dinner’. To Alexis Soyer, who was apparently the Jamie Oliver of the 19^th century? However, I don’t get chance to find out why as he dives head first into the explanation of the Great Exhibition of 1851. ‘Soyer was offered exclusive rights to the catering for the Crystal Palace built in Hyde Park. He refused as influence from the temperance movement meant that alcohol was not allowed to be served with meals. Soyer didn’t think you could have a civilised meal without booze. The contract went to Schweppes and a fortune based on carbonated (non-alcoholic) beverages was founded.’

As I breathe in to ready myself for the next question, Sam launches into a discourse about his grandfather. He was hospitalised for eating too many durian fruit apparently. It tickles Sam that I’m unaware of what this particular fruit is, and to be honest I’m annoyed with myself for not knowing either. I grew up in Africa as a young girl so I have quite an extensive knowledge when it comes to exotic fruit; well at least I thought I did. Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it as I am, ‘it has a haunting, caramel flavour that’s also a bit like cat sick’. I suggest this might be the reason why it hasn’t caught on in Sainsbury’s yet.  Again this tickles Sam and he quips ‘it’s actually not as bad as eating too much nutmeg. The spice is a psychotropic drug but just has all the bad bits of taking acid and takes 24 hours to wear off’, well I’ll be damned.

It might seem that B&P spend their days playing with jelly moulds and conjuring up the fun tales they read about in books but the reality of it is, like with any job, there is a downside. ‘We have conversations that everyone has, like saying wouldn’t it be cool if… fill in the blank. Harry and I are then geeky enough to spend the next six months turning it into a reality by making sure it fits with food and safety regulations and fine tuning any possible engineering problems.’ When your job involves staging a public event where guests are invited to absorb Hendricks’s gin and tonic through their eyeballs of a boozy mist (every drunkard’s dream), there’s more than just their jobs hanging on the line if something were to go awry. With that in mind, I ask Sam if they’ve encountered any Veruca Salt disasters yet. After a few moments of careful consideration Sam answers ‘no’. Of course this is a good thing but I can’t help but feel secretly disappointed. Judging by the tales of his grandfather I was expecting an anecdote that would have my belly shaking with laughter.

Sensing my disappointment Sam tells me the tale of ‘The Architectural Punch Bowl’ which proved to be their hairiest event in the business so far. For this event, B&P flooded an entire Mayfair listed building with 4,000 tons of Courvoisier punch. ‘It was pretty epic actually, all we had to do was flip the switch and the punch would flow straight through. Of course, when we went to turn on the switch, it didn’t work, neither did the back up. We ended up having to hand-carry twenty five litre cans of punch into the bowl. It was an exciting race against time, but we managed to get it done, so we can laugh about it now…just!’ For reasons like this, B&P always consider the implications of what can go wrong before they mull over how they can make it happen.

Despite being only in their twenties, their thought provoking ideas blended with cutting edge technology makes B&P’s business one of a kind. It also explains why Heston Blumenthal, Stella McCartney and Blur’s Alex James are included among their legion of fans. Having already conquered the jelly business in record breaking time, B&P seem to have ants in their pants once again and have set themselves the task of rebranding the cocktail industry. Therefore, they will be launching ‘Cocktails with Bompas & Parr’ in September which is another mind boggling adventure into booze tackling buckfast, alcohol in space, street drinking children and neolithic booze. ‘We wrote it as Harry and I were bored by how much most cocktail books mystify the craft and aren’t actually that helpful if you want to drink well and swiftly’.