Anna Mae's Mac 'n' Cheese Moment

The Mayor's Thames Festival took place this weekend and the banks of the river from Westminster to East London were filled with food, craft stalls and performances.

On Saturday I braved crowds and a few rain-filled clouds to try out the Southern street food pop-up Anna Mae's, my second London pop-up in just as many weeks. A London-based company, Anna Mae's serves up the increasingly popular American comfort foods: Pulled pork sandwiches and macaroni 'n' cheese.

Cooked up on location in huge cast iron pans in 'stove top' style, their mac'n'cheese is served with 3 choices of toppings. Though I was tempted by "Kanye Western"-a hotdog & mac combo- I went with the traditional mac with a bit of BBQ sauce.

The cheese blend was a nice flavor, and included Monterey Jack, which is sorely missing from a lot of British mac n cheese dishes. The BBQ sauce was nothing special, I would be interested to try something more flavorful or with a kick, so I would suggest leaving it off of your order. 

Even though I am a Kraft blue box girl at heart, I can attest that Anna Mae's is the best stovetop mac I've tried in London and my eye is on their future events to see when I can try Anna Mae's pulled pork sandwich. Or pulled pork on mac'n'cheese - because that would be amazing.

The other notable foods from the Thames festival were the free Kimchi pancakes from the Korean mini-festival, the traditional ice tea from Pause for Tea, and coconut water straight up from the crazy man who chops the coconuts with a machete.

What is your favorite place for Mac & Cheese in London?

Dante Fried Chicken Pop-up: Good Things Come to Those Who Ate

My last apartment in Philly was in Fishtown, which I believe now officially classifies me as a recovering hipster. And like anyone in recovery, I am likely to have relapses. So when I heard the words "tacos","pop-up" & "Shoreditch" last weekend, it was into my skinny jeans and back on the sauce.

Dante Fried Chicken, creators of LA's best food truck "Ride or Fry", set up for a weekend at the Prote.in studio to fry up some of their award winning fusion.
Pop up restaurants and food carts are having a moment this year, so it is appropriate that the two would converge in the pretentiously hip area of Shoredich. On Saturday they married their famous fried chicken with tacos.

And much like a royal wedding, there were a ton of people there to watch the magic happen. When we arrived the queue was about 25 people deep outside the place and almost as many people inside. 45 minutes later and a complimentary Becks to smooth out the wait, we finally got our grub!

The hotchata was decent, but would have been nicer with a cinnamon stick for flavor, at it just tasted a bit like some cinnamon powder was dumped into my cup.

I scored the very last fried chicken taco, but it was a little disappointing after that wait. Just coleslaw, on top of fried chicken on top of a tortilla. A more creative interpretation would have been nice. The fried chicken was excellent quality, though, and would go to another Dante pop-up that served just that.
The blueberry beer brisket was definitely a redeemer here, as the brisket was tender & flavourful. Wish I could have had a second, but they were sold out by the time I had finished my first!

I wish we would have known they were serving chicken 'n gravy with american biscuits on Sunday, because I would have been all over them. But unfortunately we ended up meeting friends in the area and did you know that Bar Kick serves delicious, really strong, pear martinis? So yeah, we were in no condition to hoof it back to the NE from the SW that day and will have to wait to try their other food offerings.

So until next time, Dante Fried Chicken. Check out more photos of the event here.

Have any good pop-up experiences or tips? Share them with me!