But a new generation of streetfood traders are taking the theatre of what they do to a whole new level. The Mussel Men, for instance, dress as circus strongmen in striped vests and tights. They have hourly contests, with natural feats of strength – and give the crowd the chance to win some mussels. What The Dickens don bowler hats and starched collars, and ride round on a tricycle selling devilled kidneys. Read about how your flash is your cash in my monthly Guardian column here.

The book which accompanies the new series is dedicated to Gok’s father – Poppa Wan. As a child he would feed Gok with stories of how he used to cook potatoes in makeshift ovens made of rocks and wire, hidden in the mountains that surrounded his village in Hong Kong.

“Everything in my father’s culture revolved around food” says Gok. “Happiness, sadness, forgiveness, even nicknames: I have a cousin we call Sweet Potato and my best friend goes by the name Chicken Leg. I always say that a Chink without food is like a shoe without a heel: completely pointless.”

The C4 series will delight in pulling apart a handful of classics from the street – as Gok says, “food in the hand will warm the heart”. From fragrantly spiced noodles and marinated beancurd, to hot and crunchy spring rolls, “this is food to enjoy on the move” says Gok. “Warming you down to your very soul.”

And it won’t just be Chinese streetfood – oh no. Gok also loves the hawker markets of Singapore. From the bowls of herbal soup, to fat white spring rolls, baskets of dim sum and perfectly skewered rojak, a fruit and vegetable salad served with cucumber and rice patties. Poppa Wan will be very proud.

New York is where it all started for me. And that’s why I had this crazy dream. That one day the best British Street Food traders would pack up their vans, trucks and trikes, and embark upon a five-day Atlantic crossing to challenge the Americans on their own turf. The battle (of different cuisines, styles and cultures) would be against the winners of the Vendys, New York’s own Street Food Awards. And it would really matter. It still gets me the way Americans think we eat roast beef every day.

Well, I should be careful what I wish for. Because it’s only gone and happened. I must have been talking in my sleep – and the nice lady from CNN must have crept in with her tape recorder. And this is the result. http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/eat/food-wheels-123680. Now I’m just going to have to make it happen………So, if fancy sponsoring the thing, or want to help row a very big boat, please let someone in the office know.

 Invisible Food responds to the global necessity to live more locally, and to rely less on transport. It responds to our lack of earthly connections in our inner city areas. It provides an opportunity to get on first name terms with local plants and to cook them up – not just your usual leaf-and-nettle fare, but delicious and exotic plants such as wild garlic, dandelion, hop shoots, elderflower, and fennel. In other words, foods you actually want to eat.

“We go around scraps of land, green spaces and parks,” says Ceri “and point out the parts that are edible. We pick where possible, and have a cook up at the end. We also create new recipes from the food we’ve found – not just soups and stews, but food that reflects the ethnic diversity of the area: West African styles for instance, or Caribbean styles and Asian.”

The ethos of Invisible Food is as much about friendship and community as it is about discovering, cooking and eating, As Ceri explains: “It’s about food, but it’s also about something a little more social: about people coming out, walking together and connecting, so it’s about something soulful. These plants will grow anywhere, they’ll grow in the cracks in the pavement, they’ll grow in the road… we’ll help you find and identify them.”

Ceri’s foraging tour is just one of dozens of free food events taking place across West Norwood on March 31^st, a day where the local community has united to promote not only the virtues of the ‘slow food’ ethos (food you cook yourself, with love and time, using healthy, sustainable and organic ingredients as much as possible), but also to celebrate best of British recipes, methods and food, and the very best local food artisans and chefs.  Come along.

At the British Street Food Awards, we like to think that we know our business. Check out our knowledge of world street food here. But we don’t know everything. Alex Watts does. The travelling journalist, and sometime chef, writes the food blog Chef Sandwich – and we’re huge fans. So when he offered to write us an atmospheric piece about a side to world street food we hadn’t seen first hand, we jumped at the chance.

Walk down any road in Cambodia, and you’ll see street food – sometimes an ingenious bicycle-driven cart hooked up to a car battery, sometimes a stall with a few plastic chairs to perch on.

There are old women pushing barrows of freshwater clams that are slowly ‘cooked’ on a metal tray in the morning sun for an hour or two, baguette stalls (a hangover from French imperialists) serving Cambodia’s version of the banh mi, and sometimes hawkers flogging local delicacies like fried tarantula, bugs, snakes and duck foetuses.

But the most memorable – and easily the best for my money – has to be the spit-roast cows (koo dut) you see being slowly cooked in the street next to crowds of tooting mopeds. The hunks of grilled veal are always served the same way, with a tray of crudités, salt, pepper and lime dip, and Cambodia’s fermented fish ‘cheese’ prahok.

I’m so impressed with the dish, I’ve been toying with the idea of setting up a ‘koo dut’ street food stall when I get back to the UK. I’m not sure how it would take off, and I know I’ll have more chance of getting hold of a Dodo egg in Blighty than prahok. But I reckon hunks of spit-roast calf would go down well on an English common with the sound of leather on willow and the chink of warm beer glasses.

In readiness, I’ve worked on a couple of koo dut stalls to watch how they do it – starting the day by butchering and washing the carcass, and then filling the belly with lemon grass, lime leaves and rice paddy herbs before sewing up the cavity. And then constantly feeding the coals as the beast slowly spit-roasts for hours.

Of course, I know I’ll be facing far more stringent street food regulations in the UK, and will have to fill out forms giving details of everything from my inside leg measurement to the name of the calf before the council offers me a pitch. But there’s one ludicrous law that recently came in over here that I won’t have to worry about.

The Cambodian government, in its wisdom, has banned restaurants and stalls from spit-roasting cows in public – over claims they incite violence and are bad for the image of Cambodia. It follows a meeting by the Supreme Council of the Mohanikaya Buddhist order, which decided the sight of roasting carcasses glorifies the killing of animals.

Other officials cited hygiene concerns about cooking in the street, which is ridiculous when you see the state of many indoor kitchens here, and the dozens of busy food stalls perched on every corner.

I’m delighted to say that so far the ban has been widely ignored with barbecued cows still on display in the capital Phnom Penh and in the tourist hub of Siem Reap.

But however much it is against Buddhist sensibilities, I think it’s a shame if the government does enforce the ban. It would undoubtedly lead to a lot of restaurants and stalls closing, and a lot of families being plunged on to the bread line.

The government should be showcasing these dishes, and promoting the country’s badly-marketed cuisine, rather than ordering them to be swept off the streets. Perhaps if there is a major crackdown, a koo dut stall in England wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all…

It’s basically a giant Land Rover – an ex-military 4 x 4. It only goes 55 mph, but will go climb up pretty much anything. It has, of course, been modified. “It’s got servos on it now” says Jamie. “I don’t know how the original boys did it — you would have had to be built like a brick shit house to handle it. It’s also got a wood-fired oven, and a barbecue that pulls out of the side. I had it for Feastival, and I was cooking pizzas in it for the Charlatans. It’s a beautiful thing.” And I want it at BSFA 2012…….

It’s become such a phenomenon that there’s even a TV game show about it, The Great Food Truck Race, in which seven trucks go head-to-head in a cross-country race to see whose food is the most popular and profitable. On your next trip Stateside, take to the streets to see how the once-humble food truck has taken pole position as the country’s trendiest eatery. Here are a few of our favourites.

Seabirds  — from Orange County, California — were finalists in 2011’s Great Food Truck Race, and bring a welcome dose of femininity to the largely male-dominated food-truck market. Owner Stephanie Morgan and raw-food trained chef Raya Belna serve amazingly tasty vegan fare to the famously fussy OC crowd. The local, seasonal, organic menu changes daily, but since its appearance on Good Morning America!, the Beer Battered Avocado Tacos (two for £4.50) have been a mainstay, frequently joined by Island Jack Tacos (two for £4.50), made with teriyaki-marinated Jackfruit (tastes like tart green bananas) and grilled pineapple, and vegan cupcakes (£2.50). Truck stop: Find out where and when the truck will be serving via www.twitter.com/SeabirdsTruck, Facebook: Seabirds Truck and www.seabirdstruck.com

Skip down Broadway to New York’s Union Square to find the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck – and recapture the joy of childhood with a towering cone of soft serve, dished up from an old-school ice-cream van by jovial couple Douglas Quint and Bryan Petroff. But instead of the bland confection of yesteryear, these cones (from £2 for the basic vanilla ice cream, toppings from £1) are smothered in decidedly grown-up sprinkles. Sample a Salty Pimp – dulce de leche, chocolate and sea salt – or choose from a dozen or so wackier options, like toasted curried coconut, wasabi pea dust and pumpkin butter. Truck stop: Open on warm days, late spring to early autumn, usually corner of Broadway and 17th Street; Mon-Fri, 2.30pm to 5.30pm; but check www.twitter.com/biggayicecream for daily schedule. A year-round off-shoot (Big Gay Ice Cream Shop) just opened at 125 East 7th Street.

Tourists flock to North Carolina’s Great Smoky Mountains National Park for its beautiful scenery – and there’s no better place to stay than in the hippy-happy city of Asheville. Before heading out to hike and look for bears in the hills, pick up your picnic lunch from The Lowdown. Choose from a range of creative and classic sandwiches. We like the traditional Southern BBQ sandwich, with smoked pork and Carolina barbecue sauce; the innovative and tangy Vegetarian Banh Mi, with lemongrass tofu and pickled veggies; and for kids, Lowdown’s twist on that American childhood staple, peanut butter and jelly – this one replaces the jelly with banana and nutella. Truck stop: Usually at 425 Broadway; and usually open Mon-Sat, 11am to 3pm. Follow them on www.twitter.com/thelowdowntruck and Facebook: The Lowdown Food Truck.

Legend has it that the inaugural tailgate happened in 1869, at the college football game between Rutgers and Princeton. Fans travelled to the game by carriage, and then cooked up a pre-game meal at the ‘tail-end’ of the horse. A Health and Safety nightmare. But the idea caught on. And nowadays, although the common tailgate set-up involves a small grill and a cool box, die-hard tailgaters put up shanty towns of gazebos and generators. 

There are a few rules to tailgating. First, boil your chicken at home – grill in the lot. It’s basic food safety. And second, no mayo – to keep the salmonella away. Finally, get there early to snag a metal garbage can to use as a tailgate fireplace. If you’re not lucky enough to grab one, just start a fire on the tarmac. This is real wild frontier stuff. With squeezy cheese and waterproof paper-towel holders.

Tailgating is the last great American neighbourhood: no-one locks their door. Fans of opposing teams mingle, swapping details of their marinades and their rubs. It’s the only arena of testosterone-filled sport where the apron is truly respected. It could never happen in Britain. Celtic v Rangers? Sitting down together for beer and sandwiches? Arsenal v Chelsea? Over tea and biscuits? Not in my lifetime.

I saw the Superbowl in Florida a couple of years back, when I was making an episode of the Food Programme on Miami food culture. Along the way I met a rowdy bunch of New Orleans Saints fans who tailgated a lot longer than the game lasted. “We got here way before the game” one told me, “and we stay three hours after it’s over. Longer if we win.” Which they did. Sport was the winner. And the tailgaters are probably still there…..

Pitt Cue Co. chef and co-owner Tom Adams is a very modest man. But he doesn’t have much cause to be. He’s just opened his first restaurant, hot off the back of a victorious spell on the Southbank, where his own take on American-style barbecue classics did much to improve tourist-Londoner relations — some of them even shared tables.

 It seems fantastical that, until May last year, Tom had no experience running his own outfit. He had worked in kitchens since he was 16 and before taking Pitt Cue Co. on the road he had been a chef de partie at the esteemed Blueprint Cafe on Butlers Wharf, ”I was fairly low down in the pecking order”, he laughs. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be opening a restaurant.” 

 2011 was the year that put British street food on the map, and nothing summed it up better than the pop-up stalls that lined the riverside between the Waterloo and Hungerford bridges. They all but overshadowed the neighbouring Festival of Britain. But Tom seemed very modest about the role that he played in it all.

“We just winged it really” he says. “I never thought of us as part of a street food ‘revolution’. I didn’t think anything would come of it. I expected to go back to work at the Blueprint Café with Jeremy [Lee, now head chef at Quo Vadis] at the end of the summer. It surprised us completely.”

It wasn’t easy. The smoker that Tom and his business partners ordered from the US arrived just the day before they were due to take up their coveted spot on the Southbank. They had to do all the prep in a friend’s domestic kitchen in Vauxhall and the car they used to haul the stuff less than three miles up the road frequently broke down. “But we got away with it” he says.

In fact they more than got away with it. They had a prime spot to ensnare the passing pedestrians — and an ideal place to get the London food bloggers interested. Even the critic Jay Rayner risked it for a brisket, braving the Big Ben snappers and meandering backpackers for bit of good honest barbecued grub.

Then things went pork-belly up. Still suffering periodically from a back operation a few years ago, Tom collapsed mid-service. He couldn’t get up, and had to rest for two-and-a-half weeks, meaning partner Jamie Berger had to work 18 hour shifts to keep Pitt Cue Co turning over. Tom has now fully recovered. But — for a while — the dreams turned into a nightmare.

Now Pitt Cue Co. has opened in Soho. And it’s doing a roaring trade. But the street is still at the heart of what they do. Unfortunately for the punters, so are the queues. ”Queues really help to build hype” says Tom, “but hype also means stress. When they do get served, punters expect an other-worldly experience, which can make staff nervous, particularly when what you’re really serving is home cooking.”

That’s Tom’s modesty kicking in again. The new venture is a pig-out joint in the fine American tradition, which has been overlooked for too long by the London restaurant scene. Substantial meat dishes–you might recognise the Longhorn beef ribs from the opening credits of The Flintstones — need a robust setting. With decent crockery. Pitt Cue Co. Soho ticks all the boxes.

Pitt Cue Co. is open at 1 Newburgh St, Soho, (30 seconds from Carnaby Street) from 12pm, seven days a week. And fear not, claustrophobes – the original van is in currently in cold storage but will be back on the streets this summer.

In Kolkata, the city that never sleeps, a lot of the economy still exists on barter. When I approached the enterprising street food seller, and convinced him to share his secret recipe for a tummy tickling Egg Roll, I had to hand over the sports section of my newspaper (along with an explanation of why footballers are paid stupid amounts of money back in England) in exchange. Not a bad deal. As I munched happily through every bite of the egg roll, remembering the past, I was unaware of ketchup trickling down my chin. But what did I care? I was having the best meal of my life.

Growing up on limited resources – as a student in Kolkata – I had an excellent platform to savour the joys of street food. Economic necessity! But the thought of it still makes my mouth water. Variety is definitely the spice of Kolkata street food. Taste Jhal Muri (an ingenious spiced mixture of salt and sugar, crisp and soft, fresh and cooked in a mouthful). Simple as it may seem, this one dish is made of puffed rice, a drizzle of pungent mustard oil, along with chilli, tomatoes, potatoes, coconut, fresh coriander and monkey nuts. Savoured out of a paper bag called a thonga (not to be confused with anything lacy) this is a taste that thrives in its simplicity.

Everyone who is Indian at heart grew up on the joy of chai – or tea. Thanks to the Raj, and it’s effort to break the Chinese monopoly, tea gardens were planted in Darjeeling and the foot hills of South India and the drink became affordable. Chai was the drink of the masses. And there’s nothing better for washing down street food. Street food can adapt to its location. From the unpaved cobbled steps of a village by the sea, to an upmarket mall in the heart of Kolkata’s financial district, you’re bound to find punters enjoying a plate of Chola Tikki (chickpeas and potato cakes) and Pao Bhajis with fervour and zeal. Globalization and the meteoric rise of the middle classes won’t effect the market for street food in India. It has a tradition, strongly rooted in its simplicity.

Kolkata Egg (Kathi) Roll:
Feeds the imagination of one hungry taste adventurer. Ready in minutes.

Ingredients:
One Flour Tortilla
One Egg
One Red Onion Sliced Thinly
Half A Cucumber Sliced Thinly
One Green Chilli Chopped Finely
A Drizzle Of Vegetable Oil
Ketchup And Chilli Sauce
One Lime

Drizzle some vegetable oil on a pre heated non stick pan. Place the flour tortilla in it, and fry for 10 seconds on both sides. Crack open the egg, on top of the tortilla, and scramble it. Cook the egg, for a few minutes, and flip over the tortilla, in order to cook
the egg firmly. Remove the tortilla from the pan, and place on a dinner plate. Sprinkle the raw salad of sliced red onions, chopped chillies and cucumber on one edge of the tortilla. Top with a proper squirt of ketchup, chilli sauce and a few drops of lime juice. Roll the tortilla, from one end to another in the shape of a cigar. Wrap three quarters of the egg roll in a newspaper, and serve hot, with a chilled bottle of Thums Up [Indian cola]! Taste the thunder of life!