The other day when I was visiting the Bristol Harbour Festival I was wondering if there were going to be some interesting food stalls. I have noticed at previous festivals that sometimes the food stalls can be a pile them high, sell them cheap type of festival food stall, and often local Bristol stalls can’t be seen.
If you take paella, on previous occasions there have been stalls with massive paella pans selling paella by the box, but compared to the paella from Riceminster, the festival stalls are selling a much inferior product and at a more expensive price. Having said that in the past, there have been some gems within the food stalls in the festival. This year it felt like there were a lot less food stalls at the festival. I did have a look around and one that did stick out for me and was tempting was the Flying Fillet stall in the heart of Queen’s Square.
They are Malvern based so not local, but they looked like they were selling a quality product. After wandering around the festival and seeing what else was available, I headed over to Queen’s Square and looked over the menu, as well as the fillet steak they also sold chicken wings as well. Though the beef fillet loaded fries sounded tasty, and I also quite liked the idea of some chicken wings, I went with the beef fillet and fries.
It as a popular stand so I had to wait a while for my food. What I got was a tin foil tray of seasoned fries topped with slices of medium rare fillet steak. The loaded version would have included asian slaw, chimichurri and chipotle mayo, but it was also another £3 on top.
The steak was very tender and easy to eat, which is ideal for street food where you only have a wooden fork. The chips were well seasoned, probably a little too well seasoned for me. The whole dish was quite salty and I think I would have preferred it to be made with less salt.
At £15 this was usually a lot more then I would normally pay for street food. The prices had been inflated by around £2 for this event, I suspect to pay for the high cost of the pitch. So, this was a dish I was happy with whilst attending the festival, I don’t think this would be something I would have for a lunch within the week.