Although most restaurants will be fully booked for Valentine meals this weekend, the hottest ticket in town is a reservation at a pop-up restaurant in an old scout hut in Bristol docks.

Mi Casa is the brainchild of Kristjan Bigland and Alexis John, who have worked in some of Bristol's best restaurants.

When he isn't a part-time waiter at Rockfish Grill in Clifton, Kristjan teaches at the Cookery School at Bordeaux Quay. Chef Alexis works at Papadeli and the pair met when they both worked at riverstation. A shared love of food and entertaining, combined with an interest in the rising phenomenon of supper clubs and pop-up restaurants, resulted in Mi Casa, which launched last November.

The first event attracted 40 people to the Benjamin Perry Activities Centre scout hut on Phoenix Wharf beneath Redcliffe Parade.

The diners braved snow and ice to enjoy a Spanish feast including a stew of chicken, beef, chorizo and chickpeas.

With its long communal tables, candles and dishes to share, Mi Casa feels more like dining at somebody's house, which is how the idea came about according to Kristjan.

"The original idea was to do it in my home because I was living in a large flat in Clifton, but I moved sooner than expected so that never happened.

"I had the name and the concept in my head and then we stumbled across the scout hut, which seemed the perfect location."

The second Mi Casa event takes place this Friday and Saturday. This time, the food will have a North African influence and the four-course meal, which costs £25 per head, includes lamb breast stuffed with cous cous, dried figs, preserved lemon and mint; aubergine, crispy chickpeas, yoghurt and tahini dressing, and dessert of poached pear, almond, pistachio and apricot wrapped in filo pastry.

With several years' experience in restaurants and events catering, running Mi Casa may be slightly easier for Kristjan and Alexis to pull off than it would be for other couples, but they have other reasons for doing it.

Kristjan says: "The appeal is the independence, the spontaneity and having the creativity at your fingertips.

"OK, the mechanisms of running it might be a bit more straightforward for us than it would be for a less experienced couple, but this is about drawing people into your world for a night or two."

Although Kristjan admits that they would both like to have a permanent site for Mi Casa one day, they see it as a stepping stone for other things.

"Who knows, the pop-up restaurant concept may turn into an events company of sorts? There are lots of things we could do and other locations and premises have already been offered to us."

Mi Casa is the second major restaurant to pop-up in Bristol over the past year. The first saw a derelict building in the city centre taken over for four nights by the secretive group known as Cloak and Dinner.

Kristjan thinks pop-ups and supper clubs are tapping into a large market of people who want something more than the traditional restaurant experience.

"I think people are always looking for alternatives and although there is a lot of choice in Bristol, there has been a lot of conformity in restaurants and places doing similar menus.

"The pop-up and supper club concepts allow people like us to break that conformity and offer something at a very reasonable price."

Place for this weekend's two Mi Casa events sold out within hours of being posted via Facebook and Twitter and two new dates for March have just been announced.

"It's well known that people are trying to get away from fine dining and get back to grass roots cooking and sharing communal tables, and I think pop-ups appeal to them.

"We are very conscious of the Mi Casa concept and although each one will have a different theme or style of cooking, we want each night to be an event people will remember, rather than simply a plate of food."

The rise of pop-ups and supper clubs has coincided with conventional restaurants feeling the pinch as customers continue to tighten the purse strings.

Many restaurants are quiet, some have closed. This week, The 3 Coqs Brasserie in Clifton closed its doors after trading for only eight months.

The luxury of running pop-ups and supper clubs is the fact there are so few overheads and staffing costs.

Kristjan says: "I could imagine if you are a restaurateur stuck with a site and the cogs have stopped moving, it's going to start looking gloomy very quickly.

"The mobility of a pop-up restaurant or a supper club means you can avoid the pitfalls of having a permanent site. If I were a restaurateur sitting in my £500,000 restaurant wondering where the customers are, I would probably be thinking about doing the same thing as us."

Although both Kristjan and Alexis have full-time jobs, there may come a time when Mi Casa becomes their main source of income.

"We don't make a living from Mi Casa at the moment, so it's not something we can comfortably give up our jobs for but it is already growing fast and it can grow in more than one direction so it's a really good catalyst for us.

"The best thing is that we don't have the concern or anxiety of having a property or a huge staff in this financial climate.

"Over the past few years, I haven't leapt at the chance of going out for something to eat in a restaurant, but when I do I go back to simple, informal places like Greens' Dining Room, but I also enjoy going to supper clubs."

There is a palpable sense of the old punk spirit in supper clubs and pop-ups as people do it for themselves. Kristjan says it has given people more opportunities and incentives to do their own thing.

"When you do something like this, you don't have to deal with authority and there is a sense of rebellion.

"If you want to do something, you can do it and it's not often that you get that opportunity. It's very liberating and it's also great to create something other people enjoy."

For more information about Mi Casa, or to book a place for the events on March 25/26, email micasapopup@gmail.com