The Change-Over...

So the day has finally arrived. After many amazing sounding applicants for job of Choc Star manager, I came upon this pair. Presenting: Shrimp & Ben!

Both were wilting in their office jobs and longing to get to grips with the Choc Star world. It's really physical, LONG hours, no weekends off, I kept telling them. We're so ready, they said. We want to get stuck in!

Until I starting putting the word out there for a replacement so I could get on and pursue other things, there was one thing about doing Choc Star that had never occurred to me. Yes, it's knackering, yes, you've got to be really on it to do it and yes, you are working while most other people are playing. But there is one thing that has never happened to me once in the van - and that is grappling with the desire for the clock to hurry up until home time. It just isn't like that. The rhythm is different all the time, the punters are often different and the day passes in a blur of nice chats, chocolate offerings, neon lights and music.

I'll miss this. But I'm truly excited that while I am ready to move on, two others are ready to step in. Shrimp and Ben are a delight already - do stop by and say hello if you're near.

Jimmy will be on the Southbank as part of the street food section of the Real Food Market by the Royal Festival Hall, Fridays-Sundays most weekends (but check the blog for more specific details).

Hope to see some of you there at some point - we're under the new industrial commemorative staircase, down form the Hayward Gallery.

For now, here are a few snaps of what we've been up to lately (apologies for the yawning gap between posts - life has been mental).

Book launch of Richard Johnson's Street Food Revolution - this old boy was a devil for the choc!

Cast and crew for Ridley Scott's prequel to Alien. Charlize Theron wanted to give them all a treat so we hot-footed it over to Pinewood. (Sadly no pics of CT scooping in the van).

A wedding in Somerset - this guest loved Jimmy so much he was behind that counter faster than all hell. I hit the dance floor while I had the chance....

Some of my Friday regulars on the Southbank. These two are hilarious and demons for the shakes.

Under the new stairs for the Festival of Britain celebrations. It's becoming a real chow and hang zone...

Another wedding down in the countryside. We take in large lungfuls of sweet, balmy air while we can - suck it up and save it for London.

Two of our most regular customers - Anne and Manny. She likes cupcakes, he likes death metal. Always a pleasure to see.

By the bandstand for the Royal Street Food Festival that eat.st showed out for. Great group of traders, we had a ball.


Another choc fiend...

And here is Jimmy nuzzling up to The Rye as part of the #16days event that eat.st and The Meatwagon put on. Peckham, we love you!


More soon. Enjoy the sun y'all!

Getting my Modernism on...

The snow took the first bites then the Masters gobbled up the rest. Time has not been a friend of mine of late.

Please rest assured that plans for Jimmy's winter coat shedding are under way. We have a few outings planned over the next month or so - but our next official public engagement will be on April Fool's day (for reals). From there on in it'll be high-hitting choc van action right the way through to September - including a weekly spot at the Southbank from May.

In the meantime, if yearning, you can enjoy our brownies and truffles at Wild Caper in Brixton Market and our brownie fudge sundaes at Yianni's chop-up dive bar the Meateasy in New Cross Gate (open until April).

If that still doesn't cut the mustard then get in touch!

Here and There

My life is now a curious mix of deeply rigorous academic study and a never-ending popping up at different London spots in the choc van. The two could seem far removed from each other but what I love is how well they feed into one another.

Studying cities is what my Msc is all about - how we all negotiate and interpret our urban space, despite of/because of our apparent differences and how we claim ownership of those spaces and through doing so help contribute to the health and well-being of the city.

I love that Choc Star takes me here:

Choc Star + friends were invited to trade in the Jubilee Gardens as part of the Thames Festival in September. It was a great opportunity to show off eat.st's wares in one spot - a whole strip of high-energy, high-quality, flavour and personality driven food stalls/vans lined up, shimmering.

And here:

The '80s style Fashion Fete at Covent Garden found us back on familiar territory - except with a doggy catwalk show. And an Anna Wintour coconut shy opportunity.

Oh, and with us serving Elvis Sundaes (choc ice cream, vanilla ice cream, brownie bites, banana, hot fudge sauce, salted peanuts and gold dust). Here's one happy partaker:

Then there was the Warwick Wingding. This is an interesting one. Over in Peckham there's a whole scene going on. People tend to think of Peckham as crawling with miscreants where every step is a run of the gauntlet through gnarled chicken bones and eyeballing pitballs. But what about the quaint village life that exists alongside it?

A whole community of arty folk keep the area around Warwick Gardens ticking along with a real homespun, homemade, DIY kind of lilt. Every year they hold the Wingding for the people of the area to come and sell their creations, listen to local musicians, eat well, dance, drink and so on. I was lucky enough to be invited, despite the SW9 postcode. Everyone was extremely friendly, interesting and interested. I just felt a bit sad for the small number of quite-clearly-not-part-of-the-scene kids who strayed over for an ice cream, £1 coins clasped in their mitts, and looking nervous and like real fish out of water amidst all the folksy reverie.

There was nothing stopping these two though - all the way from Canada they came (they said) to visit us!


Back on the Southbank for the Real Food Festival market. I love seeing our vehicles nestled in amongst all those clean lines and imposing edifices.

Down at the Deptford Project for a food night with The Meatwagon. This bloke turned up and started asking me lots of questions...

We bonded over the fact that one of my old friends had her first ever snog with him in a bus stop in Essex.

Then the Towpath event took on a further lease of life as we staged a two day event down by the river there - all in aid of War Child and brimming with East Londoners all looking for a bit of edge to their outdoor dining that weekend.

More of these to come as the Waterways people are excited by the possibilities that putting on events like these - self-organised, grass-roots, fabulous food, nice music, better vibes - can create. And what a wonderful opportunity to re-animate the dead zones of the canal in this way - the place was heaving! (Not in this pic - this was early).


I loved this Mad Max themed party we catered for in an old warehouse in Battersea the other day. The costumes were outrageous - but this guy trumped them all for all round squishability (little smorgasbord of choc treats for his table):

And this dude did stunts that were eye-popping:


And then there was Brent Cross. Britain's first stand-alone shopping mall - a 1970s powerhouse of hardcore consumerism. Despite seeming a little dated and past its best now, its postcode guarantees a huge number of avid, high-spending shoppers every week.

The Centre decided that the recent interest in curbside eating should be realised in their carpark every month in the form of a mini-food festival.

I actually loved being there and think it looked great. Not only our strip - which included eat.st stalwarts Churros Brothers, Brewed Boy, Healthy Yummies, The Meatwagon, Bhangra Burger and Ca Phe VN - but the contrast of that bleak, almost Brutalist facade as a backdrop to the informal, quirky arrangement of food traders who couldn't be further from your typical Nandos-fest usually associated with the mall experience.

This could have potential for real growth but it's going to require a bit of a re-think on many matters - not least of which being, how do you divert indoor mall mentality to outdoor ad-hoc style street food eating?

The good news is that pondering exactly these kinds of questions is all good for my course. Now I just have to remember how to write an essay...

Back to the Towpath for a full weekend

This weekend sees another, more expanded DIY event at the Towpath in Hackney. We're all really excited to be involved with what we hope will become a continued theme in the trading habits of the eat.st crew.

The summer has confirmed a lot of things that we already suspected: that many of the events we've traditionally attended are going in a direction that is rather lacking in the original festival spirit from which they first sprung. This is a shame because what's so special about the food traders who have joined eat.st is that we are, by our natures, still full of mad love for our customers and the food we serve. It's difficult to do what we do when confronted with exorbitant pitch fees, heavy-handed sponsors, excessive amounts of traders for too few punters and a general sense of disconnect from the good, wholesome and happy vibes.

Let me say that there are still exceptions and we love them for remaining true. And we understand that everybody needs to make money and we wish them well. But Choc Star and many of the other great people of eat.st have other ideas up our sleeves...

As I press pause on the road-tripping for a while and turn my mind to my studies, it is also London that I want to focus on more closely for the Choc Star ramblings and adventures. Full of opportunities to bring great food to its streets and public spaces - many of them disused or under-used.

We tried it a few weeks ago and now we're off again - Right opposite the canal from Jason Lowe and Lori De Mori's wonderful Towpath Cafe lies a piece of land that shouts DIY micro-festival like you wouldn't believe.

Alongside the choc-mobile will be super-proactive eat.st member Yianni of the Meatwagon, Portobello favourites Jamon Jamon, Mongo Denoon and the OK Catering Success (or The Everybody Love Love Express, depending on how you're feeling) and ruffneck coffee supremo Brewed Boy with his cart of joy.

There'll be music, fire, edible magic and sunshine. Or, in the words of Mongo Denoon:

The LoveLove Express happily heads East to be part of a one off weekend in an exclusive waterside location for a do with some of the finest street food wagons, dj's, bands, top hat cocktails and side stepping possiblities - and all blessed and bathed in the last golden days of summer. Its free if you are. Come and remind yourself why you love London.

Hope to see you there for a milkshake/chaat/espresso/burger/paella...

One day only!

We'll be back on the Southbank this Saturday for one day only.

As it's sunny and rainy and windy and all we'll be selling all sorts: ice creams, milkshakesm hot chocolates, sundaes, truffs, brownies, Willie's Cacao...

10am-6pm, Belvedere Road side of the Southbank Centre.

Warwick Wingding - Peckham, here we come!

We're so excited because this weekend we barely have to leave our neighbourhood. To some people the differences between Peckham and Brixton are massive - even the way a person walks can denote SW9 or SE15 - but when it comes down to me and Jimmy it's well local.

The Warwick Wingding is a one day urban fete kind of affair - the result of all those who know and love the green space of Warwick Garden coming together to have a bit of a late summer shin-dig.

Alongside us will be the properly local likes of The Meatwagon, Ganapati, Helen Graves serving up mezze and some storming music and fabulous japes from all manner of others.

It runs from 12-7pm and is followed by an after-party. So if you're coming from North you'd better pack an overnighter.

Thames Festival this Weekend!

This year the Thames Festival have been really keen to make collectives a key part of its trader presence. The idea being that if groups of like minded operations can come together to double up on deliveries, space, power, etc, then there is an overall reduction in the environmental and administerial burden on the Southbank - along whose shores will gather hundreds of different stalls for the coming weekend.



We at eat.st were thrilled to be given our first official opportunity to gather together in one spot and do what we do as a group. It's a rare thing to be working with such progressively minded events organisers as well - and we have the super-conscientious market trading stalwart Barny Copford and his team to thank for this.


eat.st have been allocated the most incredible pitch - right in the middle of Jubilee Gardens, under the London Eye. Together with Choc Star will be some of our crew favourites: Bhangra Burger, The Everybody Love Love Express, Eggonomics, Churros Brothers, Spinach & Agushi, Bean & Gone coffee and the new Jamon Jamon off-shoot - slinging hot, buttery garlic bread.

Looking forward to seeing you down there!

Summer slinging

The summer has been going by in a haze. What a great one we've been having. Jimmy's been getting stuck into some new places and befriending lots of new people as ever - and really shaping up pretty well for someone of his age.

I discovered recently that I have been accepted on a Masters course at UCL - an Msc in Urban Studies - and I am beyond excited at the prospect of getting my brain cranked up again. So, this summer marks the last one of things being as they were. After this year, who knows? Choc Star will most definitely continue but my role in it won't be as hands-on.

So I'm enjoying every event with Jimmy - and delighting in the excitement I still feel when hitting the road, bound for somewhere I've never been before...

In May we went to Letchworth Garden City for its first food festival. I was totally rivetted by this place - Britain's original Garden City and in possession of it's first roundabout (built in 1903). The whole town had a really extraordinary atmosphere: heavy duty, high-design suburbia with a touch of the Legoland about it.

Punters in Letchworth = all incredibly friendly and easy-going. Must be the Quaker influence.

Prime example = this couple. I marveled at her very ostentatious necklace and she tried to insist that I should keep it. Too much! Then they went on to divulge the secrets of her current husband having snatched her away from her original husband. They looked utterly delighted that things had all worked out for the best and really tucked into those Choc Star treats.

My pal and fellow eat.st founder Giles brought along Mary, his caravan of joy. While we all roasted in the upper 20 degree heat, Giles stood over a pulsing pot of games stew - chunks ahoy of rabbit, pigeon, guinea fowl, quail and venison. Next on his agenda is to incorporate some Suffolk squirrels into the equation.

The County Arms in Wandsworth booked us to be part of their re-launch at the end of May. Along with Morris dancers, face painters, jugglers and other such pageantry, we served the pub's patrons with as much sweetness and joy as they could cope with. Great burgers too...


...Although not quite as special as Yianni's. We finally got to go side-by-side again - this time outside the independently run Red Lion & Sun up in Highgate. Joder! I felt like I was crawling up out of the Brixton swamplands and onto a great precipitous ledge. Felt like another city altogether.

No sooner had I arrived than I was met with a series of food ramblers. People who love food so much that they will hunt high and low for the best on offer - no matter how far or out of the way. I was impressed by the dedication of some of them and did my best to answer all the very detailed questions about sourcing and ingredients and baking methods.

The Meatwagon delivered great juicy American style burgers (never had one in this country that tastes quite so much like the ultimate one I ate in a Wyoming roadhouse several moons ago), and we provided the sweetness.

I drove home that night (getting massively lost in Camden as ever), marveling at the pull of the informal/transitory food offering. We need more of this cutting out the middle man type trading.

Mid June found us back at the Teen-age Cancer Trust area of the Marylebone Street Fair. Loads of great people stopped by for milkshakes and chats - including this family, the man of which was one of my first ever customers when I used to take the van to Portobello Market.

He turns up occasionally and makes all the necessary 'ooh' and 'ahhh' type noises.

I have to include a pic of this lot because they were so rowdy and wild. I love kids like that - roamers, tree-climbers, camp-makers, scuffed knee-ers. One of them was called 'Mushroom'. Priceless.


And then came Winterwell....a magical micro-machine of a festival in a valley in Gloucestershire. The theme for fancy dress (because there's always a theme for fancy dress) was The Complete Works of Roald Dahl. Well blow me down, if the place wasn't run amok by a sea of Oompah-Loompahs, Fantastic Mr Foxes, Willy Wonkas and even a Snozzcumber (who revealed to me during an intimate moment at the choc counter, that his shins had had to be dressed by the St John's Ambulance for custume chafing).


But my very favourite costume of all came courtesy of this dude. Whilst other would-be Hungry Crocodiles lagged around in matted old costume cupboard type affairs, this guy went above and beyond and made the thing himself. I told him, listen, you and Jean Paul Gaultier should hook up - this lime green PVC thing is all that. I was crazy for that guy and his costume and I didn't care who knew.
Meanwhile one of my little helpers turned up for her shift as a Giant Peach. We never lost her again for the whole night.

Later on that week I returned to almost the very same spot for the OnForm bi-annual sculpture exhibition at Asthall Manor. It was an idyllic setting, marred only slightly by my having to listen to the England-Algeria game on a wind-up radio that kept needing re-booting.

Back on the road to Essex after that for the Colchester Food & Drink festival in ancient old Castle Park. I used to knock around in that park as a teen-ager. I probably slept the night there on the odd occasion when I knew not where I was or how I came to be. It felt great to be back there - almost like a county show, complete with Suffolk Punches, donkey rides and a flower competition.

This lot were eating for seven...


And I had a great little helper with me but she did try and eat her way through the profits somewhat. I'm looking forward to when my god-daughter Zahara can actually drive the thing.

The following week we returned to the Southbank for the first of the Real Food Festival monthly markets. It felt like coming home and the sun poured its sugar on us all weekend.

Favourite customers of the event was this Christopher Wallace fan and his reluctant sidekick. There's Biggie on his T-shirt. He got very excited when I told him my sitting-on-Biggie's-stoop story. Then I cranked up Playas Anthem and he fairly skipped off back into the throng.

Choc Star joins a Meating - tomorrow night.

Choc Star and The Meat Wagon (guerrilla burgers) will be making a special pilgrimage from our South London hang spots to The Red Lion & Sun pub in Highgate tomorrow night (Thurs 3rd June).


From 7pm onwards Yianni will be serving up his famous burgers (that the whole food obsessive world have been going mad for lately) and I shall be serving milkshakes, ice creams, truffles and sundaes.

It's going to be fun - do come along if you're in the area!

Big up, choc on and enjoy the sun,

This Weekend - The County Arms gets a Makeover

Hey there. Back in London now after choc van trips to Brighton and then to the fascinating planned suburbia of Letchworth Garden City. We'll be hot-footing it over to Wandsworth on Sunday for The County Arms' festivities to celebrate its new makeover.

As well as ourselves (serving up sundaes, ice creams and milkshakes), there'll be Morris dancers, magicians, face painters, story tellers, a treasure hunt, a Pimms & caipirinha bar and hopscotch.

Imagine that - hopscotch!

We're excited. If you live around South-West London and fancy some fun, get on over.

The County Arms, 345 Trinity Road, London SW18 3SH