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The item was simply described on the handwritten menu as “Cod Fish Taco.”

It was served on a no-frou-frou round white plate — a crispy chunk of fish on a flour tortilla topped with purple cabbage, thinly sliced radishes and jalapenos — in a ‘50s-style greasy spoon diner on Dalhousie Street.

Chef Matthew Carmichael’s pop-up dinner spot at Mellos Restaurant served its last meal Tuesday night as his “great experiment” came to an end, but his fish tacos, at least, will be back in a new location this fall.

The former executive chef of Side Door, E18gteen and Social will draw lessons from his five-week run of whipping up gourmet meals on a kitchen line in plain view of the 37-seat diner for his next project — a taco and raw bar on Elgin Street.

Meanwhile, he hopes the pop-up concept is something other Ottawa chefs will pick up.

“It’s like people were craving it — the dumbing-down of food in a heritage environment,” Carmichael said. “It superseded my expectations. The reception of it just blew me away.”

After a month of “setting up and breaking down” in the diner three times a week, Carmichael wants to “pass the torch.”

“It’s a tremendous effort to pull it together,” Carmichael said. “I’m not a young buck anymore. I feel young — I just turned 40 — but I think this is a cool thing for younger cooks to do that want to make a name for themselves or take over a space that’s underutilized.”

Since Mellos was serving its usual breakfast and lunch menus on days when Carmichael was using the space in the evenings, it left him little time to prepare for dinner.

“It’s a scramble to get things ready for 6 o’clock,” he said. “The kind of food that I do — I’m just very obsessive-compulsive with the type of salt that I use or the type of olive oil or where I get the herbs from.”

On Tuesday afternoon, the counter at Mellos was an explosion of rosemary, tarragon and cilantro. Jordan Holley, the current executive chef at Social who has been helping Carmichael with the pop-up, was chopping onions next to bubbling pots.

“This is the smallest kitchen I’ve ever worked in,” he said. “It’s the most fun I’ve had in 16 years of cooking.”

Holley said the diner atmosphere “really makes the food the focus,” and hinted he might also be involved in Carmichael’s upcoming taco and raw bar.

Carmichael wants to keep the exact location of his new venture a mystery for now but said he has “committed to a small space on Elgin for a small concept,” which will include a late-night takeout window. It could be open as early as mid-October, he said.

By the end of his run at Mellos, the cod taco had been replaced on the menu with a wild coho salmon taco. He said that item could end up on the menu of his new restaurant, along with tacos filled with beef, pork, lamb and maybe even tongue. Squid, ceviche and oysters will make up the raw bar part of the menu.

Carmichael also did a day-long stint as a guest chef at Hintonburg’s TacoLot on July 8 — a different local chef will be taking over the popular stand every Sunday until Nov. 4, the proceeds going to charity — and he has a theory about the growing popularity of tacos.

“You can remember taco night when you were a kid. There’s something nostalgic to it,” he said. “They’re just fun to eat.”

One other takeaway for Carmichael from the pop-up experiment is a plan to one day open a second restaurant with a diner-style setting inspired, in part, by Mellos.

“I’m totally in love with this counter-service style of eating. And this booth configuration I just fell in love with, too,” he said.

Carmichael will share more about his pop-up experience Friday morning, as part of the CreativeMornings speaker series at a talk entitled Culinary Creativity in the City.