STREET FOOD WAREHOUSE: COLONEL TOM’S GUMBO | FOOD REVIEW
For the past nine weeks Street Food Warehouse have been holding pop up events in Time café in Canton. Street Food Warehouse have held a number of high quality events in Cardiff over the last few months and the pop up restaurant is a brilliant way to highlight local chefs and their specialities. A group of friends and I decided to go along to week nine-New Orleans Kitchen Takeover. It was on a Friday night and seemed to be popular with a busy atmosphere. We ordered the drinks at the bar; there was a great range of cocktails on offer. My friends ordered the Cucumber and Elderflower Collins and the Raspberry Collins, which were sweet and refreshing.
We ordered all the starter dishes to try. There were deep-fried mac n cheese balls with Ragin Cajun salsa. This was a deliciously creamy cheese and pasta sealed in with crispy batter. There were also Colonel Tom’s Cajun spiced fries. They weren’t very spicy but were addictive. The jalapeño hushpuppies with sweet and tangy dipping sauce were interesting again not too hot but it had a nice kick. I enjoyed all of the starter dishes and was looking forward to the main meal. I ordered the buttermilk-fried chicken Po Boy. This was presented simplistically. Basically it was two slices of bread with chicken nuggets and salad in the middle. The chicken was really tender and tasty. The pickle complemented the flavours really well, however the dish overall was not very impressive. The others in the group ordered differently. The BBQ chicken and Andouille Gumbo was awful. Described as a deliciously seasoned dish which would satisfy your craving unfortunately failed to. It was greasy brown broth that tasted like gravy. The Cajun spiced butternut squash Po boy was served cold. The vegetarian jambalaya was tasty but the portion was too small.
Overall I was not impressed with the standard of food served or the service provided. The food was presented on paper plates with plastic cutlery, this just made the popup seem unprofessional. The event seemed unorganised we had to wait a long time for our cocktails and most of the food was cold. This was such a shame! Hopefully it was just a bad night for the popup and future events will be of a higher standard.
Next weekend’s event is Spanish food which does sound good. Lets hope it is tastier and better organised.
words DAISY CARTWRIGHT