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For those of you who haven’t been keeping up on twitter, Friday night marked the launch of the The Long Table – a night-time market in an empty car park in Dalston, East London, featuring some of the capital’s most popular street food vendors. Alongside the likes of Yum Buns and Big Apple Hot Dogs, some top restuarants had also taken a stand – Hawksmoor, Moro and The Loft Project were all there.

We arrived fairly early, and it turned out that this was a very good thing indeed as by 8pm there was a one-in one out policy, a queue back to Dalston Junction and a lot of would-be queue jumpers. Apparently there are plans to feed the hungry hordes while they wait in the queue next time, which might help reduce some of the tension. Once inside, the large marquee, long wooden candle-lit tables and smoke from the many grills all helped to disguise the fact that we had chosen to spend the evening in a car park.

The atmosphere was great, but it was the food that was the real reason we sat outside in the cold until 11:30 at night. Fragrant, soft and squishy steamed Yum Buns filled with slow roasted belly pork, hoi sin sauce and slivers of cucumber were an excellent choice to start. The winners on the savory front for me though were the BBQ beef short ribs from Nuno Mendes and The Loft Project. Served with mushroom caramel, salted peanut praline and baby pak choi these were sticky, sweet and salty at the same time and practically falling off the bone. I was advised today by my contact behind the stall that the secret ingredients in the mushroom caramel are butter, honey and soy sauce and I’m definitely going to set about trying to recreate this one at home.

By this point I was getting pretty full but couldn’t pass up the opportunity to savour a Hawksmoor doughnut. After an entertaining moment when the girl serving me realised that £1.50 each or £4.50 for three worked out exactly the same (she’d been telling people this all evening and the vast majority went for three!) I walked away with three myself, filled on the spot with a beautiful plum compote (there should have been custard too but sadly they’d run out of this).

The finale was a divine beetroot brownie trifle – sadly I have no idea which stall this came from as by this point we were having to take it in turns to go and fetch the food for fear of losing our precious seats. My only other regret is the lack of photographs – using a candle to light the shot only resulted in my friend getting wax all over her coat, and in any case the yum buns ended up looking like something slightly obscene… I suppose you’ll just have to get on down there on a Friday night between now and Christmas and experience it for yourselves.