Held at Feet East in Brick Lane on 23 June, London Jerk Festival brought together 10 chefs and their stalls, offering a wide variety of jerk dishes for every palate: jerk chicken, pork, prawns, jerk hotdogs, wings, plus vegan jerk for the non meat eaters.
With Chef Hasan De Four cooking for the main sponsors in the Grace Terrace on ground level, other featured eateries included Mama’s Jerk, Rudie’s, What’s On The Menu Ish?, Smoke ‘N’ Jerk, Dee’s Table and Sticky Wings.
Add some cooking demos, a wide array of drinks on offer, models in carnival costumes and steel pan and reggae music, and the event was certainly a lure to lovers of jerk. Proof of the (jerk) pudding: they sold out in advance.
I arrived in time for the entertaining ‘Hot Wing Challenge’, in which the four competitors, having signed a disclaimer and wearing plastic gloves to protect themselves, ate chicken wings coated with the hottest of chilli pepper sauces, including Trinidadian Scorpion chillies. As a result, only one competitor could manage more than one wing, and proceeded to win the challenge by eating four!
With another event planned for September, the fun-filled festival may need more space, more tickets and extra stalls to keep jerk lovers smiling.
The next Jerk Festival takes place on the 1 September, more details can be found here socanews.com/events/the-london-jerk-festival
