Meatopia is just what it says on the tin; a meat lover’s paradise.
A sort of inside festival in East London bursting at the seams with BBQs, beers & hungry foodies.
Some of the best chefs in town came together for the event and all served up good and varied fire-kissed fodder.
Speaking of varied… M & I didn’t get dressed together, but both had the same thought process… meat = plaid.
We arrived to a queue around the block and wafts of delicious smelling smoke drifting through the streets.
We grabbed our “meat dollars” (food tokens) and headed in to do a quick lap of the place, before getting ready to chow.
First up we went for Duck & Waffle’s pig’s head slider with truffle slaw.
Unbelievably delicious and easily my favourite dish from the day (I hate peaking early, but it’s true).
We grabbed a couple ciders and headed for another stall.
Tertulia (all the way from NYC) had the shortest queue, so we jumped on the tail end and waited to see what we were given.
Which turned out to be Paella de Cerdo (a sticky, smoky, porky rice dish which was a sort of risotto/paella/gluttonous rice hybrid).
Served with a bit of green, some garlic sauce & a big slice of pork fat.
Minus the fat (which M loved) it was delicious and just the sort of thing you want on a cold Autumn night, sitting by the fire.
We ate ours in the next queue, all of which had gotten pretty out of hand by this time…
But the bands kept everyone jolly.
And we ran into the famous Billy Franks who gave us some jerky to keep us going.
Koya was serving up hay seared venison sashimi, which was well worth the wait.
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By the time we got to Shake Shack they’d run out of pork belly and were serving up cheesy hot dogs instead.
The melted cheese was the sort of synthetic delicious goop you’d expect, but the sausages were raw in the middle and very watery.
M tucked in anyway!
And I had the end, cooked bits.
While the food was mostly spectacular, the best part of Meatopia was the atmosphere.
Everywhere you turned there was a band playing or a group of people making friends.
This guy totally took over the bar singing old songs that we all knew and sung along too.
I befriended this chap and I’m still jealous of his overalls.
Having played a little, we got back town to business.
The very serious business of meat eating, or meating if you will.
And washing it all down with this magical stuff, which I’ve never had before but certainly will again.
I can’t remember who served this up (if you went, please feel free to enlighten me) but it was delicious rare beef slices with a side of molten cheese and a scoop of pulled pork.
Beef. Cheese. Pork.
Boom.
We oo’d & ahh’d over it in front of the rather excellent Cyborgs.
By the end of the day M had eaten so much venison it was starting to show…
So we headed back west.
It was an excellent day & I really enjoyed it… but I do think it could have been organised better. They knew how many people were coming because it was a ticketed event, so why oh why was there quite so much queuing?
If they sort it all out for next year then you should absolutely go. It’s a corker of a day. Website here, Twitter here.
There’s one in America too.
In the meantime, get your butt down to Duck & Waffle because Dan (the chef) is cooking up his slider as a special and you need it in your life, trust me.
