British Street Food Awards 2010Are you kidding? No more heroes? We have spent months now, meeting, greeting and eating the best of British street food. And there are some real superheroes out there. Men and women doing great things in a kitchen the size of a postage stamp. Now there’s a superpower. For a bit of fun, here are three particular heroes of mine.
In troubled times, a juicy, two-fisted hamburger provides comfort. It isn’t a trend – it’s a classic. And it’s a classic for a reason. So don’t monkey about with it. The meat shouldn’t be lean — you’ll end up with a burger that’s mealy and dry. And make sure to get your meat-to-bun ratio right. For those of you new to the burger game, it’s 1:1. Of course, the Americans reckon they invented the meat sandwich. And they treat it like their own. Which is why some godforsaken place in Pennsylvania came up with ‘the 96er’. It weighs in at nine pounds. You can actually get this meat monster for $23.95, but be warned — the price does not include defibrillation. For an altogether more refined experience, try the £5 cheeseburger from Yianni (below). If you can find him. No word of a lie – he’s tucked away on an East Dulwich industrial estate, and even the most highly-trained of noses would struggle to find his hotplate. Thank goodness for twitter. In the queue for the Meatwagon were writers from two food blogs –A Hamburger Today and Will Eat For Money (a gent called Ibrahim Salha, who took the photos) – who were grilling Yianni about his 28-day aged chuck and the diary content of a cheese which, I have to say, looked dangerously like a Kraft Single. Before I ate Yianni’s burger, my favourite was cooked up by Richard Corrigan. It was made from rump steak (known for its flavour more than tenderness), bone marrow, sauteed white onion and marjoram. And I seem to remember he served it on a brioche. No wonder it won him a Michelin star. Corrigan was very particular about mincing the steak himself – he used a knife, and a mezzaluna to mince it finer. He didn’t add an egg or breadcrumbs. It was perfection. But, with Yianni’s burger, I found something that bettered perfection. Certainly one to watch in the Best Sandwich category at this year’s British Street Food Awards.
It was army scientists who first brought us dried egg, freeze-dried coffee and processed cheese. Well, they’ve gone and done it again. With everlasting bread. By lowering its acidity, and by chemically bonding its molecules to water, they have created a loaf (sic) that will stay fresh for up to three years at 26 °C. Our lives will never be the same again. But – thank God – some places are carrying on regardless, like everlasting bread never got invented. And a lot of them are on the streets. Sandwiches are the perfect street food — and a study in creativity, because (and I apologise for sounding like the Sandwich Information Bureau here) there’s no limit to what you can stick between two slices of bread. In Nice, they make the Pan Bagnat; in Paris the croque monsieur; and in New Orleans the Muffaletta and the po-boy. I’ve read about Bedouin tribesmen who make bread from flour, water and salt, which they mix together in an old baby milk tin. They then bake it into a thin pancake, on a car hub-cap straddling the fire, and serve it with meat and rice. My favourite sandwich (this week, anyway) is the Banh Mi. Here it’s made with BBQ pork, by the team from BanhMi11 sandwich from Broadway Market in London. Libby Andrews, a colleague who knows, really rated it. So, for now, let’s call it my ‘Wich Of The Week.
I will always remember Marco Pierre White in the lobby of the Soho Grand, signing for breakfast. He put it on Room 320 – the only problem was that he was in Room 322. He was the worse for wear after a night on the sambuca – ‘the house cocktail’, as he called it. The aniseed spirit was lit, extinguished (with the palm of the hand) and shot – in one. Sure, it was against New York fire regulations, and everything that was good and decent. But it was very Marco Pierre White. And the burns from last night didn’t appear to be bothering him…
White was in Manhattan promoting The Devil In The Kitchen – the American edition of his autobiography. His publicists at Bloomsbury were selling him as the original rock-star chef. The one who made Gordon Ramsay cry – who would string up his kitchen juniors by their aprons before dumping them in the dustbin. He was off to do a live cooking demo on The Martha Stewart Show. If he could keep his breakfast down long enough.
Last night it went wrong. It went wrong when White suggested ‘the house cocktail’. The heat of the shot glass threw one member of the drinking party into a blind panic, and she smashed her hand down onto the table. There was flaming sambuca everywhere. White got burnt, and had to ram his hand into a bucket of ice water, and bandage it up in a table napkin, before somebody – nobody quite remembers who – rolled him into a cab.
But somehow he still managed to look handsome – despite a grey demeanour and a tangle of greasy hair. He hadn’t spent any time at the mirror, but it wouldn’t have hurt – The Martha Stewart Show is, after all, the American standard for gracious domestic living. White’s turbot with citrus and cilantro was due to sit alongside a leaf-covered candleholder how-to, and a tip on using old navigational charts as gift wrap. It was the start of one hell of an adventure……
Marco (alongside the equally brilliant and magnificent Mark Hix, Antony Worrall Thompson and Thomasina Miers) will be judging the British Street Food Awards. And by the look of this Marco Pierre White LIDO feature in the Sunday Times magazine, he’s quite excited about it……
I have just found out that Leon want to get involved with the British Street Food Awards. And I’m excited. You see, I can still remember my first Leon meal – in a busy pedestrianised area behind Libertys. Not like Soho, where diners are never more than, say, three feet away from a car exhaust. Apart from the proximity of the Great Marlborough Street public conveniences (which, to be honest, is a plus rather than a minus at my age), it felt like a nice place to set down a few tables.
At Leon, they serve fast food. As in “food that is fast”. Not “fast food”. Although you could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Behind the counter was a multi-channelled chute, just like McDonalds. I gave the waitress my order and she turned round to get it, just like McDonalds. But at Leon the chicken is free range, the coffee is fair trade, and – if you sing at the counter – you get a free sticker. Which isn’t just like McDonalds at all.
I decided to eat indoors. Well, even though I love the street, it was raining. The food came in little pots, with no plates. But there was warm pitta to mop up any accidents at the table. The glorious Moroccan meatballs (£2.80) had the taste of grassfed lamb, and the taramasalada (£3) had a clean tang of lemon. But the magic beans (£2.50) were, well, magic. They showed what could be done with just green beans, lemon, rosemary and chilli. And gluten free/lactose free/meat free to boot!
From the two forks the South African waitress gave me, she clearly thought I was expecting company. But I wasn’t. I was just doing my job as a restaurant reviewer. When I ordered two more main courses, she smiled said ‘What you’ve eaten already tonight would feed a family of five for three days where I come from’. She clearly thought I had an eating disorder. I pointed out that I wasn’t finishing every dish I ordered, but she was off serving someone else.
The crunch-coated fish, wrapped in a Lebanese flatbread (£3.90) tasted like a “fast food” fish burger. And I mean that as a compliment. The taste of “fast food” is chemically enhanced, and has more to do with men in lab coats than men in chef’s whites. But the Leon fish burger was cooked in olive oilm and slathered in a tartar sauce, rich with capers. The fact that the fish came from sustainable sources was of secondary importance. This was a really happy meal. I always look out for their entry form when I’m judging the RSPCA Awards http://www.rspcagoodbusinessawards.com/judges.html/.
The Leon idea came from Henry Dimbleby — a former chef at the Michelin-starred Four Seasons Inn On The Park — and John Vincent. The entrepreneurial pair have found a real gap in the market. Their mix of ethical food, that is really big on flavour, has been a huge success. And now they’ve got a chain on their hands. But they still get the whole street food idea, which is why they want to support us instore and online. We are in good company, people……
Antony Worrall Thompson has just sent me this article. He wrote it for the Express, a few years ago, when he was — understandably — down on the whole idea of British street food. Now he’s coming to Ludlow to judge the British Street Food Awards. And he’s not doing it ironically. How times have changed — thank goodness.
“You’re on holiday, you’re feeling peckish, what do you do? You don’t really want the expense of a full blown meal, so you think to yourself ‘Do I trust the street vendors?’ The answer in many cases must be no. My general rule of thumb is, if you’re in a western country (USA, UK, Germany, Australia), don’t touch them with a bargepole — unless, of course, you are into greasy nondescript burgers with boiled onions or boiled frankfurters with tasteless cotton wool bread. Let’s face it — we don’t do street food well. Except, of course, the great bacon buttie. As long as good quality bacon is used.
Take the sub-continent, the Far East or other Asian Countries and even North Africa and we’re talking a very different story, I love this sort of street food. In the hawkers’ markets of Singapore I’ve experienced some of the most delicious stuffed flatbreads and piping hot bowls of steaming noodles with chicken and prawns, cooked to order in large woks.
Then in Indonesia you can’t afford to miss the different sate with a variety of sauces including the traditional peanut. There are times when you yearn a steaming spicy vegetable stir-fry enriched with sambal oelek, soy sauce and honey or some fab seafood encased in a fritter with a spicy chilli sauce.
And in China you can’t go wrong with their vegetable or chicken spring rolls. So cheap to make, but so delicious to eat. I’ve even eaten saffron ice cream from an Indian street vendor, how brave was that? But it was delicious, and I’m still here to tell the tale. Street food done well has to be one of the nicest forms of instant fodder, but be selective — go where the crowds go; it’s definitely the best endorsement.
I don’t know if it was the coffee beans (Tanzanian Peaberry and Sumatran Mandeling), the hand grinder, the personal cafetiere or the trioxane pocket stove in her handbag that give it away. But I knew early-on that my wife was particular about coffee. Now, to make matters worse, she has gone and struck up a relationship with our local coffee cart. “Try one of these” she says, handing me a coffee with a spoon dipped in white chocolate. “You want cinnamon with that?” She’s lost her coffee-loving mind. But she says she’s tasted the future. And, apparently, it will be served with gingerbread biscotti.
I remember a time when it was different. When a ‘free refill’ was a threat rather than a promise. When coffee tasted like tea. I remember industry insiders talking about toasted bran and chicory as “the new coffee” because coffee was dead. But then came Frasier and Friends, and all of a sudden we were ordering double skinnies like we knew what it actually meant. Now coffee shops are everywhere. Baristas are busily swathing espressos in hot milk, whipped cream and flavoured syrup, and handing us back something that looks like an ice-cream sundae. Which isn’t always a good thing.
You see espresso isn’t a solution but a colloid—a mixture of liquids, gases and finely dispersed solids. It has more than 1,500 chemical components detectable by taste and smell—far more than wine. A good espresso will give you an aftertaste that can last for 20 minutes, making it a good match for a short cigar. Wine, which we get terribly uppity about, is judged to have ‘a long finish’ when its aftertaste lasts for over 60 seconds. So the bean and the roast are important. The double dash of raspberry syrup doesn’t really help.
My biggest gripe is with the big coffee chains who buy pre-ground coffee. Or grind enough to last them for two days. I’m here to tell you that oxidisation is public enemy number one. Which is why I liked the smaller places. All the mobilers I know use freshly ground beans. They don’t extract the espresso too quickly (anything under 20 seconds, and I recommend a simple grinder adjustment) and they don’t try to pull multiple shots from one load of coffee. They even put the right amount of steamed milk into my cup.
All I want is my uncommon grounds. Like the coffee I tasted this week from Lean Green Machine. They deserve their success. I know that it’s fashionable to knock Starbucks. And I would always prefer a good coffee cart, given the choice. But all Starbucks is actually doing is free-market capitalism. Better than anyone else. Go live in Cuba, I say. Which doesn’t sound much of a threat any more. And it’s not like we’ve got a British coffee culture to get sentimental about.
To judge by the applications I’ve had so far, Best Hot Drink is shaping up to be a busy old category. This piece in Caterer Search explains why…….
Blimey. Look at this. If anyone told you that peddling food on the streets is a mug’s game, send them to me. This is just your average lunchtime at Daddy Donkey’s ‘burro-mobile’ in London’s Leather Lane Market. And judging by the high-end knitwear in the photograph, these guys have money to spend. According to the woman who nominated them (a Tex-Mex loving American, no less) the burritos and tacos are without a doubt the best Mexican food in the UK. I take that with a pinch of salt. And a squeeze of lemon. But keep the nominations coming.
After the launch, Marco and I went to his new-ish place at Stamford Bridge to talk about the judging process. It wasn’t a posh lunch. All we ate was custard tart. He wasn’t sure about the nutmeg — or the egginess of his custard. Graciously, I gave him my opinion.
September 2009 saw the launch of the British Street Food Awards at Whitecross Street Market in London. It was one heck of a job getting the banner there on the tube. Can I just say — do you have any idea how much a banner costs? I didn’t. This one (and I did a bit of comparative shopping beforehand) came in at just over £150. So no wonder I’m holding it up for all the world to see. Which created a bit of a problem for Antony, who didn’t have his heels on. It was the culmination of a lot of hard work — and the beginning of a lot more.
