News Funky Feast Food Bazaar at Lockmeadow wins Taste of Kent Award
Funky Feast Food Bazaar, based at Lockmeadow, has won ‘Kent Street Food Experience’ at the 2023 Taste of Kent awards.
The Taste of Kent Awards is now in its 18th year and celebrates the tastiest food and drink of Kent. The awards shine a spotlight on the regions excellence in producing fine quality British produce.
The street food restaurant Funky Feast opened at Lockmeadow’s Love Food street food hall in 2021 after Maidstone Borough Council (MBC) took over the property in 2019.
Chef and owner Eric Allangba said:
“Myself and the team are so happy to have won The Street Food Experience award at the Taste of Kent Awards. With so many great offerings in the county, it was a genuine honour that the judges decided our food and experience to be worthy of a gold spot.“Our team has worked tirelessly to build our food bazaar and we are so grateful to the judges, but more importantly our customers for their support in a tough time for the hospitality industry.”
The Judges’ said:
“Funky Feast Food Bazaar has ‘Chef’ the film written all over it; A Michelin starred chef goes rustic! This showed good community support, an interesting, North African styled menu that shows loads of support for other local businesses.”
Judges were looking for quality and use of a range of seasonal ingredients, menu choice, accuracy of the cooking, combination of flavours, innovation and flair, ambience, service and overall value for money. The category also scored highly for the promotion and use of Kent produce.
Cllr Claudine Russell, Cabinet Member for Communities, Leisure and Arts at MBC said:
“Our aim for Love Food was to use local independent businesses to offer high-quality street food with a diverse offering of world flavours at good value. Funky Feast Food Bazaar is the perfect example of this.“All our units are full and all businesses have opened during challenging times, post-covid and the cost of living crisis. So awards such as these make a big difference to their long-term success and recognise their hard work. We are delighted for Funky Feast.”
Funky Feast Food Bazaar are also number one on Trip Advisor for restaurants in Maidstone, after knocking fellow Love Food tenant Notorious BRG off the top spot earlier this year.
Love Food boasts a wide variety of street foods from North Africa, Mexico, Thailand, America, Italy, South-India and Morocco. Two of the restaurants hold first and second spots on Maidstone’s TripAdvisor and another, Flour Power coffee shop, is Maidstone’s number one Trip Advisor Bakery.