Feast, 4th August

I was so determined to go to Feast that I bought two sets of tickets – one for Saturday and one for Sunday, in case I was too hungover to make it down there on Saturday.

Happily, after an extended slumber, I felt fairly normal, and couldn’t think of a better way to cope with hangover munchies than heading down to a festival of food. Feast was an event coordinated by the same people behind the Long Table in Dalston last year, which I didn’t get to. This time they were bringing together 30 purveyors of food and drink – both street food, and established restaurants, selling their wares. It was a bit like Taste London but with a DJ, more of a festival feel, and less expensive: entry was a mere £6 in advance.

We got there at about 7:30 and spent a good two hours there, browsing the stalls and sharing a few dishes between us, grabbing a drink every now and then to let ourselves digest and make room for more! The weather was luckily very balmy (it was an outdoor event in Guy’s Quadrangle) and the DJ was pretty good – he seemed to be playing all the songs I have on my Spotify playlists.

And so, to the food. Apologies for the lack of photos. I once again forgot at first, and then by the time I remembered it was too dark for my crappy phone.

I straight away went for a dish of spiced lamb, hoummus and chilli butter from Morito. I haven’t yet eaten at Morito, though my boyfriend has several times, so I was pleased to be able to sample their food. This was really good, though perhaps a tad oily, and they let you have as much bread with it as you wanted. For £2.50! I was really impressed with the pricing of all the dishes. The only thing that we thought was maybe a little too expensive were the burgers. The Hawksmoor burgers were going for £9.00, which is probably good value for anything from Hawksmoor, but was the most expensive dish there. The Patty and Bun cheeseburgers with bacon were £7.00 which seemed just that pound too costly. Everything else was around a fiver, or £2.50-£3.00 for smaller dishes. Even the cocktails were £5.00 – very conducive to trying lots of different things.

So, we shared a Patty and Bun burger, which made the cost more bearable. I am not a fan of burgers in general and even though this one didn’t quite convince me, it seemed good as far as burgers go! It had pickled onions, and some ‘P & B’ smoky mayo and I thought those flavour combinations were very good. Stephen’s verdict was that it was nice but the meat wasn’t as steaky as some other burgers he’s had.

I had had a craving for a Yum Bun the day before but they weren’t at Eat Street, so I took advantage of their presence here to have one and to introduce Stephen to them. Mine was as good as I remembered, and Stephen thought the Yum Bun was the best dish of the day. Our next favourite were the tacos from L.A. Sueno, a street food vendor I hadn’t tried before. We had two beef tacos and one pork. I thought the tortilla tacos were good – had a nice flavour to them and not too dry and the beef was delicious. However, the fuego salsa could have done with a bit more ‘fuego’. Didn't even make my nose run!

The only bum note of the day was our last dish, which was ceviche from The Last Days of Pisco. We both thought the leche de tigre that they marinate the fish in was overpoweringly limey. I got one faint taste of fish in my first bite and the rest was lime, lime and more lime. I actually really like lime, but I also like the other things that were supposed to be in the dish so it was a shame not to be able to taste them. Also, there was so much lime that it felt like I had acid burn in my mouth. Not pleasant.

With a couple of pleasing drinks – a spiced cider from the main bar, and then a very impressive rose and raspberry cocktail from the Hendrick’s bar (which mostly tasted of lychee but which I liked all the better for it) we had, I would say, a very impressive roster of consumption. I didn’t feel I could fit any more in, which was a shame as I had my eye on the Bread Street Kitchen chicken wings, and Platform’s pigs’ cheeks with chorizo also sounded very tempting. We mooted the idea of going back the next day, but the weather and feelings of guilt at over indulgence the previous two days prevented us.

Feast is over for now, but if they do something else, I’ll make sure to try it.