Street Cleaver Pop Up

I happened upon Street Cleaver by chance thanks to a leaflet in the window of Kiosk. I love the opportunity to try out pop ups so we went to Lucky Days and booked ourselves in.

Street Cleaver describe themselves as creating unique, fresh and exciting street food. I was interested to see how they would do this in a restaurant environment and was pleasantly surprised. The dishes stayed true to the street food style but the dishes were elevated through their presentation to suit a sit down meal. With most of the dishes I could picture how they could be served in a cardboard container or in a brioche bun and be the sort of food I wanted to eat.

The first course of ‘winter spiced or cheek’ braised and charred ox cheek, red pepper, spiced beetroot powder and braised gem was a great dish. I didn’t taste much charring and I think this would have enhanced the dish but the combinations worked well. Have it in a brioche bun and you’d be very happy but put it on a nice ceramic plate and it holds its own as a part of a tasting menu.

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The next course of ‘salt baked organic beets’ , goats cheese, pickle, anchovy, dill and watercress purée was my favourite dish of the evening. The richness of the goats cheese married perfectly with the sharpness of the pickles.

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We then had ‘Pigs and eggs’ tender ham hock smoked and deep fried, cured yolk, crispy yolk, pickle and aioli. This was a really interesting dish. The Ham hock had a great flavour and the egg accompanied it really well. This was a definite street food hit.

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The final savoury dish of ‘Mackerel and radish’ sweet cured and pan fried mackerel, local grown radish, grapefruit, vinegar scraps was the dish that disappointed me. I love mackerel and it’s a great fish to play around with but the flavours on this were confused and competed with one another a bit too much.

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The last dish was ‘Something sweet’ chocolate, rum, coffee, coconut
This was an interesting dessert. More coffee and rum and I think it would be a real winner.

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I’m looking forward to seeing what Street Cleaver if they get their own place as part of the development on Piccadilly. It would be a great addition to York’s independent food scene.

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