Feast for foodies as shopping centre’s pop-up event set for return

A food festival at the Merrion Centre in Leeds is set to become a regular fixture after its first pop-up event attracted thousands of people.

Due to its close proximity to the First Direct Arena, the first Merrion StrEAT event was originally created to coincide with the recent Olly Murs concert, but due to its success, the team is now looking for more vendors to be part of an ongoing street food calendar of events.

The centre recently welcomed pop up food vendors to the main mall, offering a variety of tempting grab and go offerings from around the world including Greek, Polish and Hungarian street food.

Resident restaurant Smoke Barbeque also had a pop up stall offering passers by the chance to try its American-inspired dishes.

The Merrion Centre is home to a variety of restaurants including My Thai, Bulgogi Grill and Fuji Hiro.  In the next few weeks it will further increase its offering with the opening of Bengal Brasserie, Burger King, Sticky Sisters and Marco Pierre White’s New York Italian restaurant, as the successful Arena Quarter is extended.

James Broughton, marketing manager at the Merrion Centre, said: “We were absolutely blown away with the success of the event, and originally anticipated it would be a way to help concert-goers grab a quick bite to eat.  However, thanks to our fantastic location and the mix of food on offer, it also proved to be very popular with shoppers and office workers through the day who jumped at the chance to try some new and exciting cuisines.

“We’ve welcomed some amazing new restaurants recently, and have lots more coming soon, but we wanted to make the most of the great space we have whilst enabling food vendors to take advantage of our high footfall.  We’re already looking at holding similar events which will be added to our website soon, and we look forward to continuing to offer the people and visitors of Leeds more variety and choice as well as supporting local businesses.”