Hangfire Smokehouse wins my heart at Bestival, with awesome BBQ and big smiles.
In years past, Texas BBQ only meant a Domino's pizza topping, but following bacon's fall from the 2015 headlines, Low-n-slow Texas BBQ has taken over our collective conciousness. In fact it's hard to move in beardy-shoreditch without stumbling past a marketing agency's version of a smokehouse.
So the sight of a BBQ smoker at Bestival was a happy one, but perhaps somewhat of an expectation.
Thankfully the jovial Hangfire Smokehouse team turned out to be the real deal, and served out authentic BBQ all weekend to festival goers.
Boy was I in for a good surprise! The fearless duo Samantha Evans and Shauna Guinn love what they do, and spent time travelling round various parts of the US to hone their trade. What's more they even made their own decent reverse flow smoker! That takes quite some skill and enthusiasm.
With the DJ decks fired up with decent tunes, smoking meat right there and a crack troop of happy servers made the whole shebang a great experience. Probably the reason I returned so many times! Would have liked brisket too but then I think that's more indicative of my unhealthy obsession with it, and what they had was fantastic.
I rocked up and ordered their king ribs. OH MY FREAKING GOODNESS-NESS LOVE FOR LOW-N-SLOW. Awesome ribs. These had more meat than I've seen on a rib, and just enough bite and a secret dry-rub and sauce to serve. Don't get me started on sauce vs no sauce, it was great and I do love sticky fingers!
Throughout the the weekend I returned a good few times, tried their pulled pork; the pork itself was well seasoned and really moist. An interesting addition to the menu was chicken, which turned out to be nothing short of inspired!
Hangfire Smokehouse is a food truck, being kept very busy all over the UK from Cardiff and Abergavenny, Music festival 'Bestival' to London's Meatopia food festival!
Only problem is I now need to visit them again! Even though I'm so close by, I can't get tickets for Meatopia it's all sold out. Hey ladies want a pit-boy this weekend?
Take a look at the 5 photos above in the slider!
Find more about Hangfire Smokehouse on their website
