Saturday evening dinner and drinks
Ten years ago, the night before we gave our vows at our wedding ceremony, we went for a meal with a large group of friends and called it our Stag/Hen Night. Look, here we all are:
Look at us all. Ten years ago. In a restaurant. That was what 'eating out' meant to us, back in the day. But, since then, things have changed.* Something happened: street food happened.
Really tasty, high quality food being sold comparatively cheaply from stalls and vans, generally in wildly diverse clusters at markets or other venues. Scarcely a week now goes by where we don't get at least one or two meals from such places.
And in 2014, street food came to our local town centre in a particularly excellent way with the launch of Lewisham #ModelMarket.
This repurposing of a disused semi-indoor marketplace behind Lewisham shopping centre has been a great success, popular with locals and non-locals alike, and people of all ages.
So, ten years on from zoolyweds, we'll be doing a 2015 update to the Stag/Hen Night. Again it will be the evening before our vows, but this time there'll be no restaurant!
Instead, on the evening of Saturday 29 August:
- Between 5.30 and 6pm, we'll arrive (from the zoo!) at #ModelMarket on Molesworth Street, Lewisham, (free entry before 7) and everyone can eat dinner there and enjoy the relaxed party atmosphere. Note that bag searches are in operation and you can't take alcohol into Model Market (soft drinks are OK though).
- At about 7pm, we'll all head a short way up the road to our flat (calling at local off-licence Liquor Value or one of the Lewisham supermarkets en route) where socialising and drinking, inside and/or out on our terrace, will continue until late in the evening. If you want to come but don't know our address and won't be meeting us at Model Market first, get in touch.
Please join us in either or both location if you can! And there's no need for a firm RSVP on this one, you could literally choose to turn up on the day – although of course it's always nice to know roughly who to expect to see so feel free to tip us off by e-mail or on Facebook.
What food is available at Model Market?
Below is our summary of what's on offer in August. There are also several bars serving a bewildering array of trendy booze, costing about as much as you'd fear.
- Club Mexicana: 100% vegan; nachos, tacos, burritos
- Mama's Jerk: chicken, fish, plantain etc. Veggie option (bean cakes)
- Smokestak: pulled pork, beef brisket, ribs
- Up In My Grill: rump steak, sliders, fries, burgers
- Yum Bun: steamed buns - pork, shrimp or mushrooms
- Mother Clucker: chicken strips, fish gumbo (stew), black eye peas and rice, cajun fries
- Baz & Fred's Pizza: various pizzas, generally including a couple of veggie options
- Rolawala: Indian street food - mini-naans with chicken, pork or keralan dal (veggie)
- Mother Flipper: burgers
- SE Cakery: brownie bites, other types of cake - and tea/coffee
- Scoopsy Daisy: real fruit yogurt ice cream
Throwback reminiscences at our flat will include:
- The original music playlist from our wedding reception at the zoo! Finally a chance to hear more than 35 minutes of the 3½ hours we'd playlisted.
- The chance to look through the zoolyweds photo album, laid out by Paul and printed in America as a great big glossy book back in the days when this wasn't a service dozens of UK sites offered.
- Every photo everyone took at zoolyweds on our TV all evening
- The return of some of your favourite zoolyweds 10 games: Penguin Pile-Up and more!
- The chance to read and update dlogbook, our wedding diary and guestbook, with a new zoolyweds 10 section
- Other stuff we're still figuring out
…but will not include:
- The need to navigate a path through the crowds of Leicester Square
*Of course, there are still restaurants, and we have some favourites, like Polpo and the Big Red Pizza Bus. But it seems if you want to book for a large group to eat at either of those on, say, a Saturday evening in August, it rapidly becomes very complicated and astonishingly expensive. Not to mention adding a third layer of complciated RSVP requirements to an already admin-heavy celebration. But all of this is surely unrelated to the above plan. Ahem.