Mary (LuarDOS) Hits the Streezies!!

Never thought it would happen but a second Luardos van, Mary aka LuarDOS aka Lily the Pink aka Our Lady Guadaloupe aka One in the P... WHATEVER!! She's finally hit the streets of London sporting a salmon pink get up and some serious Bella Pace decor. Hail Mary!!!

I picked her up in Dorset last Thursday. I wasn't quite ready for the colour and I couldn't quite handle it for a while. Found solidarity at a petrol station in Melplash which helped...



She made it back to London in one big pink piece and the next day we were down at the Southbank prepping, for the first time, FISH TACOS! They're sooo good! Crispy battered Coley (pretty much straight from the ocean - they were caught the evening before), "special" sauce (mayo, yogurt, lime juice, paprika), avocado and mango chunks, fresh jalapenos, coriander and shredded cabbage. Very simple. We'd done a fair bit of practice at home...





Resident artiste Bella Pace was on hand to knock up a menu board...



... and some other noice little touches.. "What's a Badger-Fish Tacos?"



All in all it was a lovely little intro to Mary's free and easy new life on the road selling all sort of Mexican delights.. The Real Food Festival is brilliant little food market and the Southbank a happy buzzing spot to hang out on the weekend. Basically - come there this weekend, bank holiday special, and drink beer and eat tacos, or lobster, or ox cheek, or brownie fudge sundaes, or paella, or Indian burgers! And drink beer. And eat tacos.. We're there Fri 26th Aug - Mon 29th!



Sunset in Dalson on the way home was nice too...

Luardos Sponsors the New Cross Juniors

So we decided that we needed our name on a hideous fleuro yellow football shirt... Enter the New Cross Juniors!



Modelled here by the beautiful Toby. You can see the team play at Mile End Stadium every Thursday night but trust me you don't want to.

Camp Bestival 2011

Hoorah! Back at Camp Bestival... this one one of the most colourful, party party- festivals last year and this year was more of the same. We were in the Kid's Garden again which shuts at 10pm so we ALL night to rave/sleep! It was also the first time out for LuarDOS - aka Mary. Our new VAN!!



Well.. she's grey here but she's gonna be pink! After a bit of makeshift banner work and some high speed menu board painting (Thanks Bella and Harriet) we were good to go



Joined by Dave from A Human and the golden couple.. Ollie and Amy. Dave was cool. The other two made me feel a bit sick..

\

Not really. We had an amazing crew, business boomed and the sun came out at least once.



Shortly after this pic was taken we saw Janeeiene from Eastenders (Charlie Brooks) wandering around the site in a right state. She stopped us and asked (in a proper East End voice) "Please! Have you seen my baby?? I've lost my baby!!". Well wierd. We served her the next day and she'd calmed down alot... guess she found her baby.

Love Camp Bestival

Blissfields 2011

Glastonbury 2011

Old News

Was looking through a drawer and found some old bits of press. Some of it's well old!


This first one features the original wrap master Bella Pace.. guess which one she is! (CLUE: She's at the top, in the middle. She's the one who really likes The Doors!)




Great pic of the van. Awful pic of Simon. I look better this way up.




Time Out's round up of London markets..




More recent piece from ES mag... nice, we're under Q, for Queues!

Damn those paparazzi!!

Really really crazy to be in the OFM... a sign of everyone buzzing about street food which is WICKED especially if you're rollin with Eat Street. www.eat.st. Feel very lucky to be included among some amazing other traders.

The Thames Festival September 2010 (!!!)

Okaii.. this is from a long time ago but hey. I love the Thames Festival. In our first year of trading an angry farmer drove our hired fridge van into a tree and caused £2000 damage which we had to pay for. If it wasn't for the Thames Festival a few weeks later we probably would have gone under. So thank you Barney (the organiser) and London and all your tourists!!

This year Whitecross Street Market did the festival as a collective.. We had Hoxton Beach on one side of us blaring out really bad music (I cant remember what.. might have been a Jason Derulo remix of Jai Ho or something) and feeding us amazing Lebanese breakfasts. Here's Hussain looking sexy while Rashid and Dan take pictures of Sarah and a blow up sex doll (she later bacame Lucho Lucy)



Driving along the Southbank was fun...



We arrived pretty early at our pitch...



Maybe a bit too early for some people...



Lady and the Tramps



Nighttime come and the van got lit up like a christmas tree..



We were joined by Lucho Lucy, sat in the front acting as our bodyguard. I wouldn't mess with her! Se's got a horribly dirty mouth and literally no shame (she ended up in a tree.. or maybe Frank took her home, I can't remember)



We were also joined by our good friend Virginie Foucard (middle - obvs) who is an incredible opera singer. On Saturday night she just started belting out a tune mid burrito flow - here's the youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VopikIFJabc She's got some lungs on 'er that girl!!



Jeremy had a go too but he was CRAP. The cat liked it.



See you back there this year! Hopefully it won't take almost a year to blog about it this time. We're gonna be working with a collective called Eat St this year and will be just outside Tate Modern. Come get some!!!