Foodie heaven: Fruit Market serves up double helping of ‘sensational’ street food

AL FRESCO FUN: Crowds enjoying the return of Hull Street Food Nights in Zebedee’s Yard

By Simon Bristow

Foodies are invited to tuck in to a double helping of “sensational” street food this week when two of the city centre’s most popular gastro events are presented back-to-back at a new venue.

The Fruit Market area of Hull Marina will provide the setting on Thursday for the third in this summer’s series of Hull Street Food Nights.

In addition to offering the usual array of mouth-watering food and drink, the event will be the curtain-raiser for the Yum! Festival of Food and Drink, which will make its long-awaited return to the city on Friday and Saturday.

Both events are being delivered by Hull Business Improvement District (Hull BID).

Kathryn Shillito, Hull BID executive director, said: “Hull Street Food Nights has returned with a bang this summer, attracting thousands of people to the first two events in Zebedee’s Yard, and we’re confident of another bumper crowd as it forms the first course for our fantastic foodie weekend.

“The Yum! Festival will follow and is already generating great excitement among people who will never forget the variety and quality served up in previous years by food and drink businesses from the city centre and further afield.

“As ever, we’re expecting the unexpected – regular exhibitors always bring something new to Hull Street Food Nights and to the Yum! Festival and there will also be some first-timers tempting our tastebuds with a few surprises.”

POPULAR: Hull Street Food Nights in Zebedee’s Yard

Both events will also feature a lively programme of entertainment. Hull Street Food Nights will take place from 4pm until 9pm with drinkers and diners able to have a go at some crazy golf putting courtesy of Lost City Adventure Golf, and dance off the calories to live music from local covers band The Charm Offensive.

The Yum! Festival, which runs from 11am until 7pm, will have a designated Kids’ Zone featuring roundabouts, bath bomb making from Lush, candy floss sculptures, magic shows and more. Adults, meanwhile, can laugh along to live comedy at Humber Street Gallery on the Friday evening, presented by George Street-based The Comedy Lounge.

The Good Things Market – a contemporary craft and design market held at the Fruit Market – will be open on both days with its regular traders being joined by other businesses from across the city centre, including Bad Wolf Gaming, Samsara, and Watt2Wear.

Bars, restaurants and other businesses in the Fruit Market are gearing up to greet the crowds who are expected to flock to both events.

Kirk Akdemir, owner of Tasty sandwich bar and café overlooking Hull Marina, said: “Hull Street Food Nights and Yum! are both fantastic events for the city. We have seen in the past that they routinely attract a lot of people and we are delighted that they will be on our doorstep.

“It’s a great opportunity for us to show people what we do as one of the more traditional food and drink outlets in the city centre, and we hope to make a lot of new customers and new friends.”

‘IT’S ONE OF THE BEST EVENTS OF ITS KIND’: Jon Collins of Cocoa Chocolatier is looking forward to the Yum! Festival

Phil Benson, owner of The Store on Pier Street, said: “We’re about to launch our online platform so hopefully a lot of people visiting Hull Street Food Nights and the Yum! Festival will discover what we do and keep coming back, whether in person or online.

“There is much more to the Fruit Market than some people realise, and hopefully we’ll see a few new faces coming in to try our locally-produced coffee, wine, beer, gin, confectionery, meats and other items.”

Jon Collins, who has been a Yum! Festival regular since he launched Cocoa Chocolatier in 2015, spent three years trading in Humber Street while his regular home in Trinity Market was being refurbished. He’s now looking forward to the return to his old neighbourhood.

Jon said: “We’ve made a lot of progress over the years, setting up an e-commerce site and increasing our deliveries from two days a week to five days a week but people still like to come down and see what we’ve got on the counter.

“We now make our own chocolate bars and we still do individual chocolates and also sandwiches of cookies and ganache or butter cream. Salted caramel is a big seller. We also have the chocolate selections, packs of six individual chocolates, and all sorts of fudges.

“As Cocoa we’ve done the Yum! Festival every year it has been on since 2015. It’s one of the best events and even if I wasn’t working there I would be going to it.”

You can find out more about the Yum! Festival here.