Chow Down: Street food festival confirms it is leaving Leeds city centre at the end of summer after conditions became 'unsustainable'

A statement posted on the brand’s Instagram account on Thursday read: “It’s with very heavy hearts we announce Chow Down will be closing its doors for summer on Sunday 6 August and departing from Temple Arches.

"What started out as a 10-week pop-up in response to the Covid restrictions of summer 2020, morphed into a three-year successful residency and became a key event destination in Leeds. However, unfortunately after being impacted by the cost of living crisis, changing consumer behaviour for food and drink offerings and increases in all costs involved with running a temporary site, the business is sadly not sustainable to continue in its current format.

"We have achieved so many things at the current site, including helping to support the regeneration of the Temple district alongside our partners and site developer CEG, who we are hugely grateful to for giving us the opportunity to launch Chow Down and hope to work together again on fresh concepts for Temple Arches in the future.

"Over the course of three years at Temple Arches we had the honour of hosting over 150 amazing street food traders, including kitchen residencies with Sarto, MorMor, Torito Taco, Jimmy Macs, Braizin Squad, Bastards Bistro, Slice Boro and Parmogeddon, We also held the British Street Food Awards in 2021.

"Outside of food we launched some amazing event concepts, such as our Winter Village concept which took place over two Christmases, our Camp Drag brunches, plus memorable DJ sets and performances from Fat Tony, Mr Scruff, Crazy P, and Mr Wilsons Second Liners.

"We’re also very proud of our two beer collabs with North Brewing and our mural art projects with local heroes Nicholas Dixon and Melody Mural.

"While this is the end of Chow Down in its current guise, we are exploring new city centre opportunities and aim to relaunch a new concept in Leeds in the near future.

"We would like to say a huge thank you to our team, traders, DJs, performers, contractors, and most importantly our lovely loyal customers for supporting us. It would mean the world to us if you could join us for the last ever two weekends at Temple Arches for a final cocktail, beer, dance and some top notch scran.”