Taste & Liquor

Taste and liquor is a brand new street food concept held at nightingales club.
Our first visit was on the second week and the weather was beautiful, as an outside venue it is very weather dependent. Although some inside seating is available this really would lose something if you couldn’t sit outside. The movie Breakfast Club was showing in the big screen in the bar, so drinks in hand, I had a gin & tonic as no cocktails were available and Keith had a bottle of Bud and we went to the courtyard for food, on our visit there was about 6 or 7 food stalls and we plumped for Mr Jerk. I had the jerk pork served with a little bit of salad and a slice of white bread, I didn’t eat the bread but I did order a fried dumpling, sadly I found the dumpling a bit heavy but as I’ve never had fried dumpling before I’m not sure how they should be, but it did taste good. The pork was lovely, tender and tasty and beautifully blackened and smoky. The calzone pizzas caught my eye as they are cooked in a mini (yes an actual car) that has been transformed into a pizza oven. There was also a stall serving posh double cooked chips. But as lovely as my food was I felt there was not enough choice, hopefully the choice will grow as the markets success increases.
There was a few stalls inside, one selling cupcakes, one selling Birmingham mugs and artwork and a vintage clothing type stall, there was also someone offering henna tattoos, so quite a random selection.
The £1.00 entry fee is reasonable considering there was a film showing inside and music playing outside, I didn’t have to pay as I had attended the Holi-​rave and feast-​ivle that was in March by the same organiser, but I wonder if £1.00 would put off a family of five or six from attending.
It’s not something I will visit every week but I would revisit in a month or so and hope it’s grown to what could be a fabulous street food event.

Taste & Liquor is one of the newest Street food events to hit Birmingham. Popping up in two locations (Nightingales in the Gay Quarter and Coffin Works in the Jewellery Quarter), I like the idea and the ethos of these events which are being held in areas which have been somewhat passed over by the new and trendy names the City.
We had a friend in town who wanted to go for some lunch, so we decided to take him to Taste & Liquor to see if this was the new hot ticket or a bit of a gimmick. First thing to note, it’s located in the back of the Nightingales (near the smoking area). Best to approach it from Lower Essex Street and look out for the smoke signals being let off by the vendors cooking.
We paid our £1 and headed in to grab a drink and have a nose at the indoor stalls. There was around 3 or 4 (I think) stalls inside including artisan Chocolate, vintage wares and a local T-​Shirt company. There was some nice stuff (which wasn’t over priced), but there could have been more. After a brief look we headed to the bar area.
Now, this was the biggest disappointment. It was around 2pm by this point and we just wanted a pint (rather than a spirit). The option provided was Carling, Carling Cider or Rekordalig in bottle form. Now, I know this is probably what the clubbing scene want, but it certainly wasn’t what I was expecting for a funky daytime Street food event. We ordered two pints of Cider and were given two pints of Carling (fair enough, the barmaid probably didn’t hear us and we didn’t make a big fuss about this) and were charged way over what I am willing to pay for this. The event holds cocktail classes for £15pp… Now, I wouldn’t trust a bar that serves these brands to host a top cocktail class. Maybe that’s entirely snobby of me, but with the vast variety of top notch cocktails available in town, I would rather spend my money there.
We stood and drank our drinks, taking in the atmosphere. I liked the big screens (of which they were screening events later) and the music was good, but after about 30 minutes it was cranked up WAY TOO LOUD. There was only about 30 people in the whole venue at this point and we couldn’t even hear ourselves speak. We moved outside to check out the food options and choose what we would have for our lunch.
Me and Dan chose «Mr Jerk Chicken» (a piece of beautiful chicken with some salad and a piece of break, £5) and our friends went for wood fired pizza. All of the food was good and not overpriced, so this was a massive plus. The issue with the street food being in the courtyard is that two of the vendors were outside the gates (so separated from the event itself) and the food is eating in the designated smoking area. As a smoker, I left the venue entirely to avoid smoking around people eating — but clearly some people didn’t bother with this and there were clouds of cigarette and food smoke everywhere.
We grabbed a seat and had a chat about how loud the music was inside, just for someone to place a large speaker behind us and crank it RIGHT UP. This was entirely uncalled for! At this point we couldn’t talk inside or outside, so took the remainder of our food and stood in the street before moving on.
We paid £1 entry (which was perfectly acceptable for the quality of food on offer), but the food was the only plus point. Now, this was the first event; so I hope they take this on board and alter things for future markets. It has real promise and great vendors — it’s just the venue isn’t perfect for what they’re trying to achieve and the music has to be judged by the amount of people there. It’s great to try and create an atmosphere, but not to create an atmosphere by turning up the music so loud that you can’t actually hear your friends.
I am going to give the Coffin Works event a try and hopefully that’ll be better (as it’s a different venue), but I wasn’t blown away by this event.