10 | Dec | 13

Richard Johnson

New Kids On The Block

It’s wonderful to see someone genuinely excited by a challenge. Street food traders in the new Trinity Kitchen in Leeds have — to a man/woman/child — really grasped the opportunity, and are starting to master the skills of working 9am-9am seven days a week. Whilst maintaining a smile. It’s only the second month of trading, but a lot of them are turning up well in advance to sort out their supply chain, whether it’s butchers, bakers or candlestick makers. It shows — and it really does the British Street Food movement proud. Paul from Donostia Social Club is looking forward to popping down to Kirkgate Market for seafood to chef into his amazing tapas. He’ll be taking advice from local legend Andrew Critchett, who fronts up the new beach burger concept from Fish&. Dog Town and Crepe Lucette are shopping around for the best of Yorkshire. And Jon from Original Fry Up Material has been auditioning butchers to find the right fat content for his burgers. The sketch above (I hope Jon doesn’t mind me showcasing his artistic skills) is from his very own pencil. He’s clearly thought of everything. He and his partner Tom are going to have one heck of a Christmas. This is what Jon has to say about their time indoors, which starts at around midnight on December 15 when his lovely little van (and everyone else’s) gets lifted up onto the first floor of Trinity:

I think it’s the most important projects to have ever happened to modern street food as we know it in Britain and we are HUGELY privileged and excited to be part of it! To honour Trinity’s recognition of ‘indie’ traders like ourselves and reciprocate the economic benefit for the local community we are sourcing 100% of our supplies from independent Yorkshire farmers, producers and suppliers. Menu-wise we’re bringing the breakfast sandwich from where it all started for us in the form of our English Brekkie Muffin. It was conjuring up the platonic ideal of this sandwich in our minds one day at a pub in South London that sharpened our resolve to do something about cooked breakfasts ‘on-the-go’. All killer, no filler. Expect outings from classic Benedicts (fresh Hollandaise of course, shredded ham for extra sauce-ability) and Florentine’s for the veggies. We don’t get a chance to do these every day out on the streets so looking forward to that.

Burgers. Steak cuts from grass-fed Yorkshire cattle ground fresh especially for us daily – nothing processed, nothing frozen. Bun’s that we have worked bloody hard with an independent local baker to perfect. Sauces that work. We are bringing a couple of new ones up with us that we’ve not done before but keeping those under wraps at the mo- all to be revealed…

Oh yeah beer! Almost forgot… Specially for Trinity we’ve got a limited run of our own brew from The Great Yorkshire Brewery co near Pickering in North Yorkshire. Hoppy, refreshing US-style pale ale. From our supplier visits over the last couple of months, the craft beer scene in Leeds looks to be in very fine fettle indeed so couldn’t be happier that our first ever beer get’s it’s outing up there. As per everything else we are doing, it is 100% Yorkshire-sourced.

New aprons, new bowties, nice clean shirts and shiny tablecloths and the Ambo’s in the workshop as we speak getting a bit of TLC before we head up this weekend. Can’t wait it’s gonna be ace.