Gizzi Erskine Lines Up Permanent Sites For Plant-Based Junk Food Concept ‘Pure Filth’

Last week, chef and TV presenter Gizzi Erskine and nutritionist Rosemary Ferguson announced that their “fresh new food concept delivering nutritiously decadent cuisine” would pop-up for three weekends on Level 1 of the new Blavatnik Building at the Tate Modern art gallery.

Big Hospitality now report that the duo plan to bring the plant-based fast food concept to a permanent site in the new year, making the Tate Modern pop-up less a pilot run than a marketing push ahead of the brand’s entry into the market proper in the new year.

The duo say that they have found a site, but are yet to reveal where. It will be the first of three to open in 2018, though only the first has been agreed. The burgers, which Erskine says have taken a year to develop, will be priced at around £9; a £20 ‘happy meal’ will include a burger, salad, side and drink. The food, full of micronutrients and three of the recommended 10 vegetables a day, is designed to satisfy moreish cravings in the way conventional ‘junk’ food does; principally via the provision of umami: thus, the signature burgers are made from black beans, black lentils, black quinoa and their “specially blended umami paste.”

Though the initiative appears to be very much in line with the city’s comparatively new obsession with vegetarian and vegan food concepts, Erskine says that Pure Filth has a wider aim of helping the industry look less at meat and “challenging the maxims that fast food cannot be healthy, and healthy food cannot taste great.”