Texas Prison Food Never Tasted This Good

By Hanna Raskin Wed., Dec. 1 2010 at 4:11 PM

A celebrated experiential food-and-drink festival kicking off tomorrow in London will include a "Texas-style slammer," where attendees will have their mug shots taken, receive prison jumpsuits, drink tequila sunrises from urine sample cups and feast.

But the food served at the "Shoreditch State Penitentiary" is unlikely to seem familiar to anyone who's done time in Texas. The menu includes a sea-bass yuzu ceviche and free-range local eggs encased in chorizo, infused with lime and coriander and coated in tortilla chip crumbs.

"Did the final tasting tonight and it blew us away," organizer Hayley Sudbury e-mailed, post-scotch egg sampling.

A Fluid State, which premiered last year, is an entry in the growing food spectacle movement, which celebrates the culinary surreal arts. Chefs in the U.K. this year have treated ticket holders to bread baked in body-shaped loaves, levitating food (the magic's in the magnets) and cakes designed to taste like hangovers.

But this weekend's event may mark the first time food artists across the Atlantic have assigned a Texas theme to their edible antics.

"We always have a wild twist to what we do with our food and drink matches," Sudbury says, "sometimes with quite a fusion around cultural influences."

Video from Tequila: The Reconciliation - the formal name for the jailhouse experience area - can be viewed here.

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