Last weekend the OH and I went to Wales for the day. We went to the Gower Peninsula and had a picnic on Rhossili beach, and went for a walk down to the Worm’s Head – it was lovely but so windy!
On our way back we went via Cardiff so we could check out Cardiff Street Food Circus, which I’d read about on another blog recently (Emily’s Kitchen).
Set in a disused yard by the railway line, the street food circus has lots of food stalls (and trucks, and a bicycle!) around the perimeter, and a big top tent in the centre, with seating and bars, and live music or DJ.
It’s open 5pm-11pm Friday and Saturday evenings, and 2pm-10pm Sundays, and is free to get in.
Annoyingly, we turned up on the only weekend you had to pay to get in, because the street food awards were on! It was £5 to get in but you got a free pint of beer/cider/soft drink with that.
Because it was the street food awards, some of the traders were different to advertised on the website which was a bit of a shame, but we still ate well.
On to the food…
First off we had a look at DFC (dirty fried chicken – take a look at the logo!), and ordered not chicken, but halloumi – fried with pickles and a choice of sauces to nibble on whilst we perused the other stalls (£3). The chicken did look pretty tasty, and dirty, but we decided we wanted to try some of the more unusual offerings so moved on.
Find them on twitter @eatdirtybird
We made a pact not to order the same food, but to share everything, and the OH picked Patagonia as his preferred choice (who turned out to be the winners of the Street Food awards heats earlier in the day – lucky guess!). The Patagonia Cheese Steak 48 hour brisket with onions, mushrooms, mozzarella & stilton sounded immense so that was a done deal (£8). Unfortunately they’d run out of stilton, so we had extra mozzarella instead, and they cut it into two so we could share! This did not disappoint – the meat was obviously really tender and all the toppings went really well with it. The stall owners were really friendly too 🙂
Find them on twitter @PatagoniaStFood
My choice was from Bombay Frankie Rolls (by Purple Poppadom) and was a flatbread coated with a thin layer of omelette, with a choice of fillings and pickles, chutney and red onion. I went for the tandoori chicken tikka filling and it was pretty spicy! Really delicious though and quite filling. I also liked the fact that they asked for my name and spelt it right without having to ask – then I remembered I was in Wales with a welsh name so it wasn’t that weird…
All that spicy loveliness meant it was time for more drinks, and Chai Guy came up with the goods to go with my indian food – a mango lassi smoothie (£2). Perfect. The OH went for a Karma Cola from the bar which is fair-trade and has an excellently designed bottle!
Find Chai Guy on twitter @bristolchai_guy
One of the main trucks we’d wanted to visit when i originally looked at the line-up was the Brûlée Bar by Wild Fig farm – loads of different variations on cremè brûlée, torched to order. Good times. When we first turned up and saw the van was there we rejoiced. We also noticed it had a huge queue… later on we went back and saw that all the brulee’s had run out… sad times. There weren’t any other dessert vans or stalls on offer (gap in the market?), so we queued up anyway and had some of their ice cream – salted caramel with salted candied peanut topping. Double salt, double caramel, pretty awesome. It might be worth queueing for dessert first if you go, or bringing along your own creme brûlées, as they don’t seem to have enough to cater to all the potential customers…
Find Wild Fig on twitter @wildfigfarm
Before we went I had one of the special cocktails in the big top bar, which was like a second dessert anyway – a Candy Floss Vodka Soda (£6). Pretty much as it sounds, candy floss is soaked in vodka so it disintegrates, and then is topped up with soda. it was very sweet and very sweet to look at!
The street food circus was great fun and reminded me that not all cool stuff happens in London! I can see Bristol doing something similar if it hasn’t already (maybe as part of Eat Drink Bristol Fashion next year?)
Is anyone doing anything fun or food-related this weekend?
creaminmycoffee 