Last night, I went to check out the Queens of ‘Cue supper club/underground restaurant/whatever you want to call it, in Peckham. At 6.30pm, we found ourselves wandering around what seemed like a derelict yard off the Old Kent Road, BYO booze in hands, lost and slightly confused. The signs, they are small.

Eventually though we came across a precarious metal staircase and ascended to a vast, bright studio (one of the hosts is an artist), stopped briefly to wallow in envy and then followed our noses outside to find 3 BBQ’s on the go, one stuffed with beef ribs, the other grilling steak, various pots and pans bubbling on top. An excellent (spiky and tart) caipirinha was thrust into our hands and we munched on ‘giobada and queijo toasts’, which were in fact little chewy, cheesy buns, kind of like savoury scones, with home-made cheese and a guava paste exactly like membrillo, but obviously made with guava. The theme of the evening was Brazilian you see, and they’d gone to town on making things ‘authentic’.

The steak had come from a Brazilian butcher in Brixton; they’d intended to buy it from the East London Steak Co. but felt a pang of local loyalty post-riots and decided to support a local business instead. Good on them I say. We helped ourselves to salad from the table and demolished slices of perfectly cooked, butter-tender steak. The flavour of the meat was excellent (I’d been a bit dubious for some reason) with a moreish, properly seasoned crust.

The ribs had come from the East London Steak Co. after all and were huge; a peek under the BBQ hood on arrival had got me very excited. In the end they could have done with a bit more cooking to be honest; I’m not against a chewy rib believe me but they were very large and a bit hard to eat. That said, great flavour, great rub and fantastic sides of feijoada (a rich stew of beans with beef and chorizo), rice with sweetcorn and peas and a healthy serving of kale. Oh how I love the iron intensity of kale.

An unexpected watermelon granita filled a gap and preceded a creme caramel made with condensed milk because, according to our hosts, “almost everything in Brazil is made with condensed milk.” There was coffee to finish, served with obscenely good chocolate truffles which we wolfed before staggering out into the night to our taxi.

So, I would recommend Queens of ‘Cue to locals and non-locals alike. One guy said he “hated South London” after he’d had a hard time travelling from Dalston. Did he go via the moon? “You’re talking to the wrong woman mate” I hissed through gritted teeth.

The evenings each have a different theme; ours was a ‘cow feast’ and the next is ‘fish’ (3rd September) followed by ‘game and venison’ (17th September). It’s £25 and BYO booze. There’s a lot of food for your money (seconds were offered too), the hosts are charming and interesting, the studio space is great and you get to wander around a ramshackle yard in the dark, pissed, looking for a questionably plumbed toilet in an outhouse. That last bit doesn’t sound appealing? Oh come on, where’s your sense of adventure…

Queens of ‘Cue, Peckham
£25 pp, BYO booze
Address available after booking, see blog for details

If you live in London, like burgers and you haven’t heard of The Meatwagon then you must have been living under a rock. Yianni Papoutsis serves burgers (and other American classics) that blow any competition so far out of the water they practically cease to exist. He started out serving from his Meatwagon van on an industrial estate in Peckham and now regularly rocks up at one of Scott Collins’ pubs in South East London which include (amongst others) The Florence in Herne Hill, The Victoria in Peckham and now The Goldsmiths Tavern (soon to revert to its original name, The New Cross House). This time, there is no van; you could describe it as a pop up restaurant, but it’s going to be so much more down and dirty. The restaurant/dive bar is billed as the #MEATEASY and it’s a greedy carnivore’s boozy playground. I gave Yianni and Scott a good grilling to find out more about the project and their future plans.

Yianni, before we get onto the ‘chop-up’ that is the #MEATEASY, tell us a little about The Meatwagon – what inspired you to start up?

Possibly some kind of mild stroke.

For those who don’t know (fools!), tell us about the kind of food you serve from The Wagon. Do you have a favourite recipe? Any new recipes you’re currently working on?

We serve my slightly bastardised version of classic American diner food: Burgers, Philly Cheesesteaks, chilli dogs etc. Everything is made with the best available ingredients, cooked to order every time.

One of the reasons your burgers taste so great is that you take great care in sourcing your ingredients. Can you reveal any of your suppliers (meat, buns, cheese etc.) or do you prefer to keep that info under wraps?

I love chatting with our customers about the minutiae of crafting truly great burgers and a lot of our basic techniques are out there for anyone to use. You yourself did a great article on recreating one of our Chilli Cheeseburgers a few months ago and Mark Hix recently published a version of our cheeseburger recipe in the Independent Magazine. Those techniques are one part of the formula for a great burger and I consider them public domain. My suppliers, however, I’d prefer to keep to myself. A gentleman has to have some secrets, after all.

Besides, finding your own favourite local suppliers is half the fun in my opinion.

So, tell us about the #MEATEASY…

#MEATEASY is The Meatwagon wearing its winter coat.

As I’m sure some of your readers will have heard, The Meatwagon (v.2.0) and its entire contents was stolen from its home in Peckham just before Christmas. Three weeks later, just after New Year’s, Scott and I were sitting in the Bishop having a few ales, trying to come up with a temporary solution to the theft of the Wagon. We came up with #MEATEASY.

Long story short: Scott will be taking over the Goldsmiths Tavern for Capital Pubs next month and reopening it as The New Cross House (its original name). He’s arranged for us to take over the upstairs room until the renovations start and we’ve had total free reign to do whatever we want with it. My good friend Lisa (@Roxanne­_Roll) came up with some amazing design ideas and I hope we’ve created a space where people will feel comfortable drinking and hanging out as well as grabbing a bite to eat.

Cocktail gurus Soul Shakers have put together a truly unique bar – if you haven’t heard of them, google them. You’ll get the idea.

We stepped into the room last Saturday, 8th January. We got busy. We opened to the public four days later.

How long will the restaurant be open?

Until mid March.

Will you be offering the same menu as The Meatwagon?

The menu will include absolutely everything we’ve ever done at the Meatwagon – all the burgers, the dogs, the Buffalo Wings, plus a few other things we’ve been wanting to try out for ages – Mac & Cheese, onion rings, and my own version of a classic kebab-shop chicken burger.

And fries! One of the reasons we’ve never done fries is that the logistics and time involved in triple cooking fries from scratch in the wagon made it both unfeasible and financial suicide. I’m employing one chef who will just do fries. All day. Every day. They will loathe the sight of both me and potatoes by the end of this, I can guarantee you.

Will pricing stay the same?

I’ve had to put a quid on the burgers I’m afraid (first ever Meatwagon price rise) but a cheeseburger’s still only six quid: That’s for a third of a pound of meat which is still pretty good bang for your buck, I reckon. It costs as much to set up a restaurant for two months as it does for two years so we’ve had to adjust our prices a touch to cover the extra costs. I think at the moment the prices max out at 8 quid or so for some of the bigger dishes.

Serving in a restaurant is obviously going to be different to serving from the van, are you confident you can serve people fast enough/cope with the level of orders?

I really don’t see this as a restaurant; if it’s anything, it’s a dive bar. We’ve never tried to be slick-as-shit full-service restaurant. Far from it: we are what we are.

Our food is always cooked to order and as such it takes as long as it takes. That’s just how it has to be to maintain a consistently high standard. Having said that, we’ve now got a crew of three working in the kitchen (as opposed to two in the Wagon) plus front of house & bar staff. Right from when The Meatwagon started, I’ve always tried to make the wait for food as bearable as possible with music, good drinks and an interesting environment. We’re continuing the tradition with #MEATEASY.

Are you worried that people will expect a different level of service from a restaurant than a van?

As I said, #MEATEASY isn’t really a restaurant.

I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from the local bars & taverns I’ve visited all over the States where I’ve eaten some of the best food of my life.

Giles (from Soulshakers) really has done wonders with the bar so hopefully people will take advantage of that while they wait.

Oh, and we don’t take bookings. There is one exception to that rule, however: There’s one table that can be reserved and that is kept for the sole use of the people who’ve helped out with putting #MEATEASY together. It really wouldn’t have been possible without their support and I think it’s fair that they’re rewarded.

How will you judge the success of #MEATEASY?

One: Are people enjoying the food?

Two: Are people having fun?

Three: Can I put aside a bit money towards buying a new Meatwagon for the summer.

Once #MEATEASY is packed up and tidied away and a happy, happy memory for all of us, will the Wagon be back?

Fuck yes.

If so, do you have any plans to take the new Meatwagon outside the UK?

Well, I have been doing ‘Burgers for Burners’ at Burning Man for a few years now (for free, of course, according to the Burning Man ethos) out of the back of an RV, but really, spending a week suffering from altitude sickness, dehydration and culture shock out in the middle of the Nevada desert seems like a lot of effort to go to for a burger.

I’d love to do some cooking in the States, as opposed to just binge-eating, but no firm plans yet, so if any of our American cousins are reading this and they’ve got a griddle and a good butcher, feel free to get in touch.

You often tweet about your next location. How important has Twitter been in drawing in custom for The Meatwagon?

It’s been invaluable.

We’ve never advertised anywhere other than Twitter, Facebook and our website. We still don’t even have a logo, after a year-and-a-half. Twitter lets me communicate directly with people who’ve made an active decision to take an interest what we do.

I do make a point of trying to use @themeatwagonuk responsibly. In general I’ll only put out the bare minimum information rather than spam our followers with trivia. People following @themeatwagonuk don’t want to hear about my hangover or my thoughts on Nick Clegg – they just want to know where to get some red meat and a stiff drink.

You’re a member of eat.st, the street food collective aimed at ‘driving British street food forward’. Do you think there’s a great future for street food in this country?

I still find it amazing that London, one of the most cosmopolitan cities on the planet, has such a poor street food scene when we have such a huge wealth of different cultures’ cuisines to draw from.

eat st. is a really exciting organisation and I’m very proud to be a part of it. It represents the crème-de-la-crème of British street food. There’s some amazingly talented chefs involved, and some great personalities. The Florence recently hosted the ‘Tweetmass Gathering’ with eat st. and where the Meatwagon did the meat, Petra from Chocstar (my partner in crime in wagon-based misadventures) served up dessert, Angus (Kolkata Street Food) handled the vegetarian option and the Meantime Brewery got everyone drunk on London Lager. Perfect symbiosis.

One thing I’ve always been very aware of when it comes to street food in the UK is that we are at the mercy of the weather, and to a certain extent #MEATEASY is a practical solution to that problem; we did a couple of gigs before Christmas where we were outside cooking in the snow (literally ankle-deep in the stuff on one occasion at The Florence after the wagon was stolen). People came in their droves, and a rum old time was had by all. But, let’s be honest, standing around in the snow around a fire and eating meat is fine every now and then, but I do find that the novelty of snow wears off pretty quickly.

I think that with some essential changes in legislation and a bit of creative thinking with regards to the weather issue, we could have one of the most vibrant street food scenes in the world.

And finally, I can’t resist: you’re a fellow Peckham resident – any good local food tips?

Manzie’s for pie, mash & liquor.

Scott, you and Yianni are quite the team now; how did you come to learn about The Meatwagon and what made you decide to get together and park up that wagon in your pubs?

I heard about the wagon through Twitter, visited and was obviously bowled over. He needed somewhere a little more accessible to park it. I took a punt on the car park at The Florence. It was a huge success and worked well for us because we have never used a PR or Marketing co. and have always believed in the old fashioned way of word of mouth. Twitter is just a modern day, faster version of this. The wagon brought a couple of hundred food fans to the pub, some of which had never visited. A lot remain customers to date.

Yianni and I have become firm friends and I believe quite a pool of talent. A street version of Trevor Gulliver and Fergus Henderson, maybe…

Twitter really pulls in the customers for Meatwagon events and you use Twitter quite actively too – do you think it has boosted your business in any way?

The wagon and Twitter have boosted sales and as above, raised our profile. Twitter is amazing for getting immediate feedback, positive and negative which can be dealt with very, very quickly.

Are you nervous about hosting a pop-up restaurant in one of your pubs, particularly one that is just getting started?

We don’t own the pub yet, the current owner has agreed to let us do this. When we take possession on the 7th Feb we will be closing the downstairs and starting a full refurb early March. Yianni will carry on operating until we start the refurb. His presence will help people from outside of New Cross visit and see the before and after effect of one of our refurbs.

Will The New Cross House be serving food after #MEATEASY has closed?

The New Cross house will offer a similar menu to The Actress: gourmet pizza and rustic pub grub.

Depending on the #MEATEASY’s popularity over the next couple of months, it may not close after the refurb downstairs…

All your pubs are in South East London (ish). What’s so great about the area and do you plan to open any more?

South East and South West (this side of the river) has welcomed everything I’ve opened. I live here (East Dulwich) and wouldn’t dream of opening anywhere that I couldn’t visit daily and easily. I like the people and the mentality. Come Easter I will have opened three new pubs and completed a refurb on an existing one (The Clarence, Balham) within one calendar year. So no immediate plans. Still have a children’s room to add to the Victoria and hotel rooms to put above The Actress. Then I’m going to have a breather…

A big thanks to Scott and Yianni for taking the time to answer my questions what with being two of the busiest people I know. I visited the #MEATEASY on Tuesday night and wowee! Yeah it’s pretty special. The buffalo wings get busy with hot sauce and butter. I mean, come on. Get down there, that’s all I can say. Do it, do it tonight.

Goldsmiths Tavern,
316 New Cross Road,
New Cross,
London,
SE14 6AF

Follow Yianni on Twitter
Follow Scott on Twitter
The Meatwagon website and facebook page
The Capital Pub Company
Other posts on The #MEATEASY: Hollow Legs, Cheese and Biscuits, A Rather Unusual Chinaman.

Thank you very much to A Rather Unusual Chinaman and Hollow Legs for letting me use their photos. Mine were rubbish.

After I popped my underground restaurant cherry at Ms Marmite Lover’s pad, I found I’d acquired rather a taste for the scene. The combination of a buzzing atmosphere, where people are a bit high on the whole secrecy/naughtiness vibe with an opportunity to nose inside other people’s houses and get a damn good feed at a damn good price is a winner in my opinion.

The Rambling Restaurant is rather more ‘occasional’ than the others I’ve come across. When my friend and I got wind of it we booked ourselves in for the opening night. The first night of an underground restaurant is much more of a venture into the unknown than that of a legit outfit of course, you truly don’t know what you’re going to get. I mean, can they even actually cook?

We were greeted with a rather boozy yet delicious elderflower cocktail which got jaws loosened and soothed away all memories of our unwanted scenic tour around Camden (i.e we got lost). The RR dining room is studio in layout and the chefs had basically pinned a cloth across the wall to make a divide between kitchen and dining area and to screen themselves from view. I have to say, I’d do the same – particularly on my opening night. If I was in the middle of a monumental f*ck up, I certainly wouldn’t want people watching my sweat drip into the soup.

We started with liver, bacon and mushy peas. It wasn’t quite what I expected, the liver being a coarse pate rather than a lobe but it actually turned out to be the best part – rich and meaty with good depth of flavour. The accompanying pea/tomato/cumin yoghurt combo in a shot glass was less successful however and a little bit confused, something which chef and patron The Food Rambler fully acknowledged when I sent her my feedback (which she asked for).

The main was a trout fillet with fennel, rocket and a rosti. The fish was perfectly cooked with a good crispy skin and silky flakes and the fennel and rocket provided welcome punches of pepper and anise. The only problem really was the presentation of the dish which was just a touch too rustic and the texture of the rosti suffered considerably from sitting in the sauce.

As usual in these BYO situations, we were fairly plastered by dessert (on Portugese (!) wine from a nearby shop) but I do remember that the chocolate fondant was really, really good – wicked, rich, gooey and deep with cocoa. For £15, the evening was a bargain, as we left bursting at the seams.

Although we could hear a lot of sizzling, clanging and clattering behind the sheet, our host always emerged calm and collected (I imagine her doing a short sharp outward breath, pinning back a stray hair and composing herself before emerging). She tells me the evening descended into chaos somewhat after I left for the last tube, with guests scrabbling in the bedroom for cafetieres but personally, I think it would only have added to the charm.

Now we whizz South of the river from Camden to Blackheath and the Savoy Truffle Supper Club. Sounds a bit more formal I know, and it was – not stiff, or stuffy but just a little more slick and established. It has been running longer and is staffed by professional chefs, so this is hardly surprising. Being skint as usual I knew I would need to make a thrifty choice on the alcohol but the name ‘Savoy Truffle Supper Club’ didn’t seem to encourage this and neither did the matching suggestions on the website. With some time to kill before my train then I disguised my budget bottle with a cunning label (above), which was certain to fool everyone who laid eyes upon it. Sorted.

We started with an amuse of roasted red pepper soup with harissa crème fraiche and Greek basil (which the supermarkets have started selling I’ve noticed). It had all the expected sweet intensity of a pepper soup with a good fiery kick of harissa. An excellent warm up.

Our starter was simple, elegant and delicious – crushed broad beans and mozzarella on sourdough toast. Man that toast was crispy. Thankfully the room was alive with excited chatter, which was just enough to disguise our crunching. The mozzarella was wonderfully milky and generously proportioned. I’d like to eat this for lunch for a week.

Next up the holy blubber of pig. A good slab of belly, bearing crispy crackling with a little melty underside preceding tender meat. The accompanying rumble de thumps was perfect – nuggets of cabbage amidst cloudy potato. A swirl of Madeira and anise jus and a dollop of caramelised onions added lightly spiced sweetness.

Our palettes were cleansed with a refreshing elderflower sorbet before the main dessert arrived, a rather tidy version of Eton Mess. The meringue was good and chewy within, the berries sweet and ripe and the cream did its job of lubricating and binding in its own delightfully sinful way. The effects of generous portions were beginning to show at this point but I’m pleased to report that I struggled on through to the end.

My interest in underground restaurants shows no signs of abating and I’m thoroughly enjoying making comparisons. The clientèle at STSC were a little more mature than those at the RR, whereas The Underground Restaurant appears to attract a good mixture of both, for example. I’ve had my eye on the Pale Blue Door but apparently it’s shut in September and I’m waiting on a reply for re-opening times. Perhaps I should start my own in the meantime. Nah, I wouldn’t have the nerve…would I?

I think it takes an incredibly brave person to open an underground restaurant. I mean, of course it is illegal but apart from that – cooking for 20 odd strangers in your very own home every week might be a bit well, stressful/tiring/anxiety provoking/all of the above? Not a bit of it on Saturday night however, when three friends and I dined at the house of the formidable Ms Marmite Lover – not the faintest flicker of worry on her face.

While Ms ML had been calmly preparing (a fabulous tweet revealed her to be up at 12am the previous night making “fu**ing tarte au citron”), we had been sweating it out on smelly buses. As I’m sure all you Londoners will appreciate, the transport system is never what can be described as fully operational at weekends – TFL somehow always manage to shut the bits that you personally need to use. For this reason then, we made a therapeutic pit stop at the nearby pub for pre-dinner pints before moving on in high spirits towards the restaurant.

Greeted at the door with a welcoming smile and a glass of Kir Semi-Royale, we were instantly absorbed into the warm glow within Ms ML’s home. There was a chance for some pre-dinner mingling with the other diners, which perhaps could better be described as a bit of time for them to ‘get used to us’ and our generally excitable ways.

The house by this point was filled with the delicious smell of our first course – raviolo stuffed with portobello, oyster and button mushrooms with an onion cappuccino (cooked by Charlie Nelson). I’m pretty sure everyone agreed this was really good, particularly that sauce. I mean, onions and cream – need I say more?

Our main was salmon en papillote, served with dill, creme fraiche and aga roasted potatoes. The salmon was very fresh and spring-like and those aga roasted potatoes pleased me no end with their little wrinkly jackets. A rocket and pine nut salad added a hit of greenery and was dressed with a fine vinaigrette – robust, thick and unapologetic – just how I like it.

To finish there was that ‘fu**ing’ lemon tart – well worth Ms ML’s efforts, with a good tart whack of citrus, wonderful smooth texture and a bonus surprise addition of meringues which were really nice and chewy, I suspect due to an ultra-slow cooking in the aga.

Ms ML most definitely scores top marks as a hostess (as does her daughter as waitress), the whole evening was incredibly relaxed and the atmosphere in the room by the end of dinner was, ahem ‘lively’ to say the least. All 18 diners chatting and laughing – our table loudest of all if I remember rightly. We even managed to persuade Chris to give us a little impromptu tinkle on Ms ML’s ivories (not as rude as it sounds), to which I know there was out of tune singing and punching of fists in the air because I have video evidence on my camera.

There was coffee to follow but three hours after arrival we Southerners had to flee lest we miss the last train and be stranded on the wrong side of the river. Terrible things can happen to a Londoner when stranded on the wrong side of the water after midnight you know. Don’t worry though, because sleeping on Ms ML’s camp bed isn’t one of them – yep, she has even been known to accomodate the odd tipsy diner for the night*. Now that’s what I call hospitality.

You can buy tickets for the underground restaurant and cooking classes here.

*please do not take this for granted. I’m saying it happened, not that she runs a hotel too….