This Summer!

So recently we've been pretty busy writing to festivals to try and get invited along to cater the parties this summer... Festival season is wicked! It's like a cross between Big Brother and Masterchef (The Professionals). Here's us demonstrating how to do TEAMWORK:

Yeah. Pleased to say that response so far has been hella good.. here's a little look at where we'll be (so far). We're aiming to get the whole summer booked up! Ohhh shit!

Meadowlands: 1 - 3 June 2012

"A diverse and vibrant music festival held at Glynde Place, near Glyndebourne Opera House, located within the beautiful setting of the South Downs, with easy links to London, Brighton, Lewes and the wider Sussex area." And LTJ Bukem and Speech Debelle are playing. A new one for us but it looks lovely and has a nice relaxing name.

Blissfields: 29 June - 1 July

Blissfields. WTF. It's SUCH a good festival. I remember walking about 20m across a field there one year looking around and everywhere I looked someone else would be doing something stupid.. like jumping in a bin, or pretending to throw up backwards.. Can't really put it into words very well but it is SO much fun and run by very sound people. Also Dick Piper is likely to be perfoming there - http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=513740992

Childwickbury Arts Fair 6 - 8 July

"A three day celebration of the arts held inside the beautiful private grounds of Childwickbury Estate, St. Albans where you will find a vibrant mix of workshops, demonstrations and entertainment for all ages, a great day out for families." At Stanley Kubrick's place.

Port Elliot Festival: 19 - 22 July

When I asked Petra Barran from Eat Street / Chocstar which festival I should do her number 1 was Port Elliot. I'm excited about it cos of that and cos of this:

"One of the great aspects of running a festival (and there are many) is the things that go on about which you have little or no idea: for example, when someone comes into the site office and says: “Can I have a table please?” Pause. “Of course. Why?” “Oh, for a séance I am having in your woods tonight.” Or perhaps you come across a masked ball at three in the morning in the middle of the maze — again, not on the programme, and thus the better for it. Or when maybe a tripped-out punter has roped a disco ball 40 foot up in cathedral-like beech trees and you come across it at five in the morning, you know the festival has taken on a life of its own"

Yeah. Spiritual.

Camp Bestival: 26 - 29 July

"It's inspired by the halcyon days of summers past - imagine the 1950s British Holiday Camp with a twist and you’ll get close to what Camp Bestival is all about." Very good! We've done it for the last couple of years.. our field closes at 10pm so we get to party EARLY!

That's it at the moment... hopefully those offers will fly in in the next couple of months. Check out the events page at www.luardos.co.uk for what we've got booked in.

The Stylist Mag - She HUNGREY!

Lovely little piece in the Stylist Magazine all about one lady's daily eating habits. It's a bit like those programmes on tele where they ask you to write down exactly what you eat in a week and then they put it all in a see through bag and show you and everyone feels sick.

Bit like that, except we don't see the bag, we just see this lady (Let's call her Penny) stood in front of her favourite places lookin all cool and stylin'..

05:13 and while the friendly milkman hops off to deliver Mrs Evan's daily order, Penny jumps on board and helps herself to a pint of gold top. Charming.

Check it. It's 09:11 and a much healthier shout from Penny! Looks like she's gonna have some williams pears, oranges and apples.

Ahhh... what's this? 12:30 and Penny's getting a Burrito from Luardos on Whitecross Street Market!! (clap, clap, clap). Fair play Pen (!), You got rice and beans; the perfect combonation of protein providing all the essential amino acids (Who knew?), Tomatoes; they contain lycopene - great for preventing prostate cancer. Perfect. Avocados; "It's good fats" they can help lower cholesterol levels, Iceberg Lettuce; contains Lactucarium "Lettuce Opium" - helps you get to sleep... surely not the cause of the Burrito coma!? And Capsaicum; contains an anti fungal agent.

Right.. Penny had a burrito at 12.30. I don't know about you but that normally keeps me going until at least 6 or 7 pm. It's 16:23 Penny! Why you lookin at RICE?? Also, why you lookin all crazy like that? What happened this afternoon?

19:17: Man down. I think we've lost her. She's sitting on the counter in the Fryer's Delight scoffing a bag of Rock and large chips with extra saveloy and (bleeugh...) pickled egg vinegar!

Once you pop, you can't stop. 23:48 and after a pint of cream/milk, 2 crates of fruit, 2 full takeaway meals and who knows how much Pure Basmati, Penny tucks into a salt beef beigel with mustard and gherkins. Go to bed Penny. Only 5 hours till milk time!

Thank you to Lee Jenkins (Great photos!) and everyone at the Stylist.

Mary get's an INSA makeover...

You may or may not know this but Luardos has recently doubled it's fleet... Jesus finally has a partner - her name: Mary! She'd been sporting a slightly weak salmon pink get up for a while and it was time to "Pimp dat Riiide". Who ya gonna call? Well, international booty freak - INSA!

So Mary is the van and INSA is the man. In every sense of the word. I guess. He started on the back which pretty much HAD to have a massive picture of The Virgin Mary praying to he roses. "What's that crown there for INSA?" "Cos you're the king of burritos!" "Oh yeah."

And then onto this side and this incredibly attractive young lady who appears to be eating a cool original dorito. Or it might be a dairylee.

Then on to the other side and this pair of mysterious DOTD ladies. "Do you think one of them should be smoking a big spliff?" "Yeah, I reckon" "And shall we do some ganja leaves down here" "Ok"

"Ummm, can you stop painting pictures on your stupid van now and make me a sandwich!!"

Paint job done and it needed a heavy coat of 2 part lacquer to try and seal it all in and get it looking all shiney!

This is after coat 2.

Keith from The Prodigy doing his special hands dance

Think this was coat 5! Hoping and praying that it's enough to seal the paint in for at least a couple of years.

Mary down at Kings Cross at the Eat St Market. Massive thank you to INSA for painting another Luardos van and for making me feel even more ridiculous when driving around.

Check out INSA's blog at www.insaland.co.uk. Toot! toot!

Jason Bruges New Studio Opening Party

I cant remember when... sometime in September.. we did a party for Jason Bruges Studios who were celebrating the opening of a new studio where they do cool stuff with lights and choose to reveal cars with CRAZY techniques like this Aston up here - most people just pull a cloth. Damn!

They also chose to eat hella tasty food at their party. Here's some pics.

I don't know if anyone ate one of those chillies in the salsa but if you know what they are you know you don't want to! We made some salsas and guacamole and sour cream to have w/ tortilla chips, then chipotle brisket and blackened salsa chicken thigh tacos and later on some black bean and chorizo ones. Ouch!

And everyone there had fun and got drunk and played table tennis and listened to the err.. band.

Here's what the managing dude Darren had to say:

"Hi Simon, just a quick thank you to you and your team last night at the party. We’ve had fantastically positive feedback from our guests about the night and the food!"

Reee-joice!

Yeah! So we can do parties now! If you want it, send us a message in the "contact" bit. Thanks!

End of the Road 2011

... was a winner! Here's a few pics:

How to make a Luardos banner by Bella Pace

Step 1: draw some fancy letters on some squares... preparation is key.



Step 2: Get yourself some tools. Man the hell up!



Step 3: dum dee dum dee duummm...



Step 4: .. rum pee dum pee dooo...



Step 5: ... clam pee dam pee brrrrum!!..



Step 6: Yeah. You cut it out using the squares and the drawings and the clamps and the jigsky. Bella Pace did it. She makes all sorts of signs, menu boards, or anything else like that. She daaamn good too! Check out her and her friend Harriet's website http://goodbyandspeed.com/(they do alot of our stuff..)



Step 7: Kinda don't really need these step by step things here. You can work it out by the pictures eh.



Step 8: Delicious!

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...