I am really happy to report that I have had the great pleasure of talking to the great team at Eat St, who are behind the new King’s Boulevard street food micro-market (amongst other fabulous ventures you may have seen them at).
Happily I’ll be sharing content from the blog with their website, with this post the first to feature on both.
It was fantastic to talk to Petra, co-founder and, I have to say, all round superwoman, who is part of the team behind this excellent cooperative of high quality street food traders.
Since my last post in early October, I have visited the site a number of times and it has already developed a lively and magnetic atmosphere, drawing people in from surrounding areas throughout the day, which seems incredible given the short space of time it has been there. The trial period is over but due to the overwhelming success of the first month, the site is now trading three days a week: Wednesday to Friday, 10am – 4pm.
With what Eat St are calling a “smorgasbord” of street food traders rotating every day, with special guests popping up every now and again, there will always be something to whet your appetite: whatever time of day, whatever the weather.
And whilst you’re up there, I would highly recommend a look around the new Central St Martins building: an amazing site from both inside and out. Oh to be an art student – they may be lamenting the move from Soho but you couldn’t ask for a more fantastic and inspiring piece of architecture to spend 4 years learning your craft in.
www.eat.st/kings-cross
Street Food Stories on Eat Street
Central St Martins at King’s Cross
It is an exponential improvement and it has changed Kings Cross so much for the better it’s true. But living in the area for 20 years it was never quite a culinary wasteland if you knew where to look: Konstam restaurant and especially it’s small lunch-time cousin, Gon Bei (which closed about 5 years ago) was one of the best Japanese restaurants in London. Acorn House was reportedly good (I never visited); North Sea Fish Restaurant 1o minutes away one of the best chip shops in London; King of Felafel near there not bad and there was a decent Vietnamese place for a little while on Kings Cross Road – to say nothing of Camino or a handful of decent places five minutes away in Somerstown.
So it’s a little revisionist to say Kings Cross was ever a culinary wasteland.
It’s a good point Phil, but the type of cheap (£5 lunch deals) and good quality food the micro-market provides is pretty much non-existent in that particular area of King’s Cross, unless you count the chain stores that St Pancras offers. For me I don’t think Camino is particularly affordable and you would need to then walk at least another 10 minutes further to Somerstown or Bloomsbury. I know and used to love going to Konstam for lunch so it was a huge disappointment when it closed. The area in King’s Cross has changed so much in the last 5 years and will probably be unrecognisable again in another 5 years from now, for that specific site I don’t think what Petra is saying is unfair, more a reaction to the constant change that is occurring at the moment without taking away from the great restaurants that have peppered King’s Cross and surrounds for years.