Street food focus: Pub in the Park Dulwich

Henry Norman pops into the south London leg of this annual summertime institution...

Tom Kerridge’s summertime ‘pub crawl’ has become something of an institution in recent years, styling itself as ‘the biggest food and music festival tour in the UK’. A handy way for inns to get out and about, it basically takes the holy trinity of things that make the British pub great – food, drinks and music – and parks them all down in a greenspace near you.

It's probably fair to say that the dining is a little more cutting-edge than the music, with the latter being carefully selected to appeal to the slightly older clientele who tend to populate the more affluent areas that it generally visits. This throws up some slightly unlikely decisions to be made on the clash front, such as whether to see EMF or a Q&A with TK himself.

On the foodie front, this equates to an offer that is higher-end than your average festival fare, even in these food truck-driven times. This equates to a number of the country’s finest gastropubs offering up tasting plates for £7 each (a pint is slightly more).

Keeping things local, we begin with Peckham pub The Begging Bowl’s Thai fried chicken, which provides the requisite kick and crunch, flavour- and texture-wise. Deliciously salty and spicy, it proves to be the ideal quick hit to fuel you up between trips to the bar and the music stage.

Moving further afield, we travel all the way up north to Islington inn Hicce Hart’s stand and opt for the beef. Like all the best ribs, you have work to get the meat off the bone. And, delivering on taste as well as tear, you are certainly rewarded for your efforts, making for the undoubted dish of the day.

Tom Kerridge’s travelling tavern tour will be parking itself in six more cities before the season is over. If you enjoy drinking, eating and dancing (well… enjoying yourself) then it certainly sets a high enough bar to be well worth a visit.

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