Homeboys, the brainchild and baby of former MasterChef contestant and local boy Pete Hewitt, are one of the residents at The Nottingham Street Food Club and have been ever present since it first opened it’s doors just 1 year ago.

As it was the Street Food Clubs 1st Year Birthday Party, this weekend,  it seemed fitting to head over to their corner of the club to check out one of the club’s stalwarts.

This wasn’t my first taste of the Homeboys Food, but for some unknown reason I had failed to blog about them at The Nottingham Street Food Club and the only time I had recorded keystrokes on the blog about them was back in 2015 when I had first eaten Pete’s food at The Taste of Rushcliffe in West Bridgford (check that out here). Sorry Guys

This weekend I came in on the Friday when the club was heaving and checked out the Homeboys Burger, then I came back on Sunday Lunchtime to grab one of their Duck Confit Donuts (Saturday was Footy and a BBQ) 🙂

Lets have a bit more of a look at what we scoffed

The Homeboys Burger

The Homeboy for £10 was basically a huge big beast of a burger! Officially the menu board describes this as “Double Aged Beef patty, Japanese Burger sauce, Soy + Mirin Onion Jam, Pickled White onion,  Lettuce + Tomato on a Brioche Bun”

There was no messing around with this baby! It was ‘stacked’ with those two big thick patties of Beef, and boy were they juicy and meaty! I will be honest, when I saw the burger on my plate I didn’t think that I was going to be able to pick it up to eat without it falling apart in my hands. No worries though, everything seemed to cling on to those meat patties for dear life, and all was well.

Flavourwise, the melding of the Japanese Burger sauce, that was dripping all over both layers of meat, and dripping out all over the plate, with the burgers was fantastic. It was a little bit spicy, but not in a bad way, more like a gentle sweet warming. The soy and mirin onion jam that was in the midst of the layers was really good to with a savoury sweetness that kept you wanting more bites. There was a little bit of sharp crunchy tang from the pickles, but that kind of got lost on my palate as everything mixed together to explode inside my mouth.

For the record there were some healthy salad items in there underneath all the meat, but they were just there for my 1-a-day and by the time they were covered with burger sauce, I suspect all health benefits had been pushed to one side as they had swum around in the pool of glorious juices formed by all the other good stuff.

Yeh, I liked this burger, it was a bit too much meat, and yes I did find that lots of the juice and the sauce somehow managed to cover my face and my hands, but that was all part of the fun. I don’t mind looking like a messy eater, when the eating is good 🙂

The Confit Duck Donut

I walked back into The Nottingham Street Food Club on the Sunday to check out the “Confit Duck Donut” that had been pictured all over social media before the events of the weekend. I knew that it was a ‘Special’ so I had to take my chances to make sure that I got my hands on one. For the record I was at the door as the shutters were pulled back at midday, but I still wasn’t the first in the queue at Homeboys!

This Confit Duck Donut was described on the menu board as ‘Spiced Confit Duck, Orange Glaze, Endive, Coriander + Pickled Mustard Seed salad, Peanut Powder on a Sourdough Brioche Donut’. Now that is a great summary of the contents, and although it ‘hints’ at how good this bite of food is going to be, it really is one that you had to eat to taste just how good it was.

Back to the eating 🙂

This was presented really well so that as soon as I saw my sandwich prey I was hooked into loving it. There was a very generous stack of pulled confit duck piled inside the buns, it was on the edge of tumbling out, on the precipice of escape, but there was no running away from my satisfactions.

With all great sandwiches this one kept giving flavour and tastes as you worked your way through it mouthful by mouthful. As you first bite in you get the sweetness of the orange and the stickiness of the glaze that gently coated the roof of your mouth and clung to your fingers so that you had to pause to lick them clean.

Then you are inside biting through a soft fluffy brioche pillow to the slightly salty and rich dark meat of the duck, some bits crispy some bits soft. It all seems to be one big fiesta of game meat!

Then you hit the crunchy, slightly tart and tangy, yet fresh salad of ‘fancy’ greens, endive, coriander, and mustard seeds which draws away all the potential fattiness and makes it ‘almost’ feel like a healthy bite. The crumbled peanut dust on the top was just one more special addition that made this so good a sandwich.

I suppose if I put a cartoon of some sort of “Confit Duck Donut” with a cartoon speech bubble coming out of the side saying “Eat me! I am ace” and a smiley face and a thumbs up, it would be close to how I felt about it afterwards 🙂 

All I can add to that is that this was a ‘Special’ that really was quite Special! -) I hope that they have it on the menu again!

The Menu Board

The menu at Homeboys changes quite a lot so that there is pretty much always something new to try. This week it seemed like they had gone all out with the big solid sandwich filled with bold flavour and heartiness. Other weekends it has been about the buttermilk fried chicken sliders, and tasty baos filled with Asian inspired treats. They have also been serving up Katsu Chicken curry and Noodles over recent weekends. It is never boring at the Homeboy’s corner of the Club 🙂

Homeboys are to be found at The Nottingham Street Food Club as one of the residents on Thursday through Sunday

If you want to check out where else they are out and about check out their Facebook Page and their Twitter Feed although they are not as active on both and seem to be more active on Instagram *which is where I spotted that Duck Confit Donut!)