Big Bad Pop-Ups is a month-long series of pop-up restaurants featuring high-end chefs serving street food in Oxford, Mississippi.

The event comes courtesy John Currence, who owns Oxford’s celebrated City Grocery as well as Bouré, Big Bad Breakfast, Snack Bar, and the Main Event catering company. City Grocery is undergoing renovations during the month of January, so, says City Grocery’s chef de cuisine Jesse Houston, “We wanted to make sure the staff kept busy, involve our friends, and have fun with it too.”

Those friends include chefs who’ll have the run of the Main Event site for four days each, Wednesdays through Saturdays, to create cheap and portable eats. Participating in Big Bad Pop-Ups: Eli Kirshstein of Top Chef fame (January 9th-12th); chefs from City Grocery (January 16th-19th); Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen/Hog & Hominy’s Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman (January 23rd-26th); and Restaurant Iris’ Kelly English (January 30th-February 2nd).

Kirshstein will serve up Israeli street food. The folks from City Grocery are doing Americana staples like hamburgers and hot dogs. Ticer and Hudman will bring their unique Hog & Hominy-style of Italian-meets-Southern fare to Oxford, while English’s take will be Louisiana-style truck-stop food.

“It’s going to be fun for us fancy chefs to do food we wouldn’t normally do,” says English, who’s planning on serving boudin hot dogs and chicken red beans and rice, among other fare. “It’s really filthy food, just filthy,” he says. “I mean that in the most positive way.”

For more information, go the event’s Facebook page.

http://www.memphisflyer.com/HungryMemphis/archives/2012/12/26/big-bad-pop-ups-street-food-pop-up-restaurants-in-oxford