Trudi and Justine run their catering business, Percy & Lily’s, as well as their venue, The Hide, in Sheffield. They have been street food friends of ours since 2016 when they worked with us on an outdoor screening of Romeo & Juliet at Park Hill. They were one of the first businesses in Sheffield (if not the first) to kick start Sheffield’s street food culture in 2014 and since then have opened their own venue, The Hide, as well as travelled to some amazing countries to enhance their culinary offering. We decided to talk to them about everything street food, weddings and travel.
We love you ladies! But please can you tell us a bit more about why you set up Percy & Lily’s and why you took on The Hide? We set up Percy & Lily’s in 2014, after many trips around the world together. Our first business Homemade, in Nether Edge, was established in 2008 having returned from a 10 month round the world trip together. Percy & Lily’s was named after Trudi’s grandfather and Justine’s grandmother, both of whom loved cooking and equally, we loved eating their food. The world of street food had not arrived in Sheffield and we wanted to be one of the first street food traders, and searched for a Citroen H Van to convert. We ended up buying two with Percy becoming the streetfood van, and Lily the bar. Within weeks of setting up the business, we got introduced to someone, and before we knew it we’d found a warehouse. This preceded Peddler, just! After a few months of running pop ups we started getting asked to host parties and in 2015 had the opportunity of taking over the building and The Hide became ours. You’re obviously very busy people, with a successful catering business and venue - what are your favourite events to work on and what are your ambitions for the future? We have always catered for weddings, they are really our ‘bread and butter’ but we have always enjoyed trading at Peddler, The Village Screen, Sheffield Food Festival and Tramlines. Our favourite events are often the unique ones...the ones you’ll never do again! We loved an event we curated in Sheffield called Beer X in 2016 and 2017. We were set the task of curating the food and drink offering for a large Beer Industry conference hosted at Ice Sheffield. We worked with friends within our network from great locally roasted coffee by Fraser, to Sheffield businesses Fancy an Indian, Pie Eyed and Street Food Chef. It was the biggest thing we curated and was such a lovely experience on both years. Our ambition has never been to scale up either business, we are really happy with how The Hide and Percy & Lily’s operate. Our main ambitions are about what we do next... so watch this space! You’ve both done a lot of travelling - please can you tell us what your favourite trip would be? We’ve had our favourite trips together around South America over the past few years. We’ve been fortunate enough to go to Brazil twice, Argentina, Peru, Chile and most recently, (pre-Covid) to Colombia. These trips have been magical journeys and offered us much culinary inspiration. If we could go again, we’d happily sit on Leblon beach in Rio de Janeiro eating bolinhos or in Cartagena, Colombia eating freshly griddled arepas. Please can you tell us a bit more about what influences your style of cooking? We’ve created 10 streetfood menus, and they are always influenced by the places we’ve travelled to and the food we’ve eaten. We love preparing slow cooked meats, and interesting veggie dishes. Justine has a skill for flavour and is our sauce and dressing guru. What has been the best meal you have ever eaten? Trudi: One of the best meals I’ve ever eaten was Cholent, a Jewish slow cooked stew, eaten in a lovely small restaurant in the Kazimierz district of Krakow, Poland. I remember it and yearn to eat it again. Poland was fabulous for food! Justine: one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten was in Rodney’s Oyster Bar, Vancouver. It began with a seared yellowfin tuna which I dream about, followed by the most delicious Halibut I’ve ever eaten. Rodney’s know how to cook fish. The joint meal we always want to eat is in our favourite bar in Barcelona El Xampanyet. We go every time we visit, often two or three times, for a grilled squid dish, a white sausage dish, Padron peppers with steak and the most delightful béchamel potatoes as tapas on the bar. What has been your favourite Village Screen event to work on? So, we loved taking Percy to Park Hill for Romeo & Juliet…it was a really iconic landscape and also a very iconic film. As a teacher of A level Media Studies, this had been one of my chosen key texts, as I found Luhrmann’s realisation of the narrative so engaging. So this event sticks in my memory. What is your favourite film? Trudi: Grease Justine: Oliver! What is your favourite cinema snack? We both love a great hotdog, but cheesy nachos with lots of jalapeños is always a favourite of Trudi’s.