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.

Mumbai is a heady mix of cultures and regional influences. The city’s food reflects that, with a wide variety of regional cuisine on offer including Parsi, Maharashtrian, Punjabi and Bengali. Cafes, stalls, vans and small quaint thali spaces all entice and cater to the locals, the busy office workers and the tourists, giving them a flavour of what all the fuss is about.

I was born in Mumbai and grew up eating a lot of what we call ‘street food’ as part of my daily fare. Breakfast was at a local street cafe, where my mother and I would queue up early to sample steaming poha or puffed rice – a typical breakfast snack cooked with onions, chillies and a squeeze of lime. With a cup of tea in tow this was (and still is) the perfect start to my day.

From buttery pav bhaji (mashed spiced vegetables served with fried bread) at Juhu Beach and kebabs and biryanis at Kakori House, to the melt-in-your-mouth mutton curries and the coastal food that’s pretty much part of my DNA – I have eaten it all and then some. It still excites me to go back to the restaurants and cafes that I visited when I was younger.

My favourite dishes include roasted butta (above) a charred corn on the cob smeared with a chilli, lime and salt mix, and kheema pav, a minced lamb dish cooked in spices, vinegar and chilli. Cooking these dishes passes on an essence of what Mumbai street food is all about. The flavours, aromas, spices and recipes from my favourite city bring a joy that will stay with me forever.

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!

For me, comfort food needs to slather on the fat – for for a bowl of spaghetti to be truly comforting, it needs a creamy sauce. But I kept quiet in case I offended anyone. I didn’t want to get involved in the politics of pasta even though I’ve always felt very strongly that just because Italians don’t serve a cappuccino after 10am, or a salad with a pizza, doesn’t mean that we have to do the same. I was just a little reluctant to say as much in front of Giorgio Locatelli, who was Young’s chef-in-residence.

I didn’t cut my spaghetti. Or use a spoon. It would have been an insult to Giorgio. That’s because he had chosen the type of pasta to suit the sauce. But I’ve seen him working countless times, and he doesn’t get that sort of thing wrong. It was a meal that was both comforting AND exciting. Like all of Young’s themed nights. Food you really want to eat, cooked by chefs you really want to experience, at prices you really don’t mind paying. If only it was available out on the street……

Photo by Paul Winch-Furness

Saturday Kitchen Talking Street Food ….

Cooking in a restaurant? Hard. Cooking on the street? Harder. Just ask high-end chef (and the winner of Best Main Dish at the British Street Food Awards) Jun Tanaka. “If you’re working in a professional kitchen, the only limitation is you” says Jun. “And your creativity. In a truck you’re limited by everything else. In Pearl, my restaurant, if I’m trying out a new dish I don’t think ‘Well, I’ve only got a certain number of chefs and they won’t be able to cope with anything too complicated’. Or ‘I don’t have the right equipment to make this dish work’. But when I’m working on the street, I just have to do the best I can.”

Jun, and his partner Mark Jankel, launched their Street Kitchen during the 2010 London Restaurant Festival. It was high concept. “We were very clear about our ethos from the start – it was all about sourcing everything from great farms within the UK. But because we wanted the food to be accessible to everyone, we had in our mind a price point that we couldn’t go over. We had seen people in London prepared to pay £6 for a burrito or a gourmet burger. So we decided to set our top price at £6.50. That seemed fair.”

On a “research” trip to New York, Jun did the round of the city’s famous food trucks. His favourite was Schnitzel & Things, where the queues regularly snake round the block. He thought their lightly breaded cutlets of chicken, pork and cod were fried to golden perfection, but awkward to eat. “I got a big platter, a knife and fork and a huge deep-fried schnitzel, and I needed a table to put it on. I just grabbed mine in my hand and ate it like a sandwich. Street food should be easy to eat – I think they had forgotten that at Schnitzel & Things.”

With Street Kitchen, Jun wanted people to be able to hold their bowl in one hand – and their cutlery in the other. He didn’t want the food to feel too cheffy. “At Pearl, people come to eat my style of cuisine. They’re already foodies, and they’re coming to experience what I want to put on the plate. But street food is different. It’s all about catering to absolutely everybody. If someone come up and see a fancy-sounding dish on the menu, and it doesn’t connect with them immediately, you’ve lost their custom forever.”

To see how service should work, Jun visited Daddy Donkey Kick Ass Mexican Grill in London. The business has gone from a rickety wooden barrow to a big, bright burro-mobile by serving 500 people in a lunchtime. The staff of eight have to work, flat-out, in a production line. “It’s the most efficient way to do it” says Jun. “The customers follow the food. They order at one end, follow it along, and they pay for it at the other. The staff don’t move. That’s one thing we learnt very quickly. The staff have to stay in a line.”

He learnt how to manage his queue from Roland at Flaming Cactus, one of the founding fathers of the British street food movement. “He taught us that people love to see a queue” says Jun. “Whether it’s in front of a nightclub or a food truck. If there’s a queue, people think you must be okay, so maintain your queue. When you don’t have a lot of people, you slow it down a bit, and when do you have a lot of people you serve them as quickly as possible. But I’ve been in a restaurant kitchen for 20 years – I found it quite difficult learning to make people wait.” He had better get used to it….

It’s the latest victory in the ongoing democratisation of French food. Two centuries after Antonin Carême introduced grande cuisine, France is (again) in revolt. And it’s right that it should take place on the streets of Paris. It’s being led by Le Fooding, a new movement that’s ranged against the old-fashioned restaurants and their outdated approach to food. In the brave new world of Le Fooding, the Michelin guide will be ripped up, and the restaurants of France, once again, will be reclaimed by the people. Allons, enfants de la patrie.

Le Fooding was founded 10 years ago by Alexandre Cammas and Emmanuel Rubin, two food journalists who were exasperated by the conformity and conservatism of French food culture. Every year it publishes, from its dusty offices on the Right Bank, a good-looking guide to the best restaurants of France. With no grades, or stars, it’s very different from the Michelin guide. “Michelin inspectors look at the rugs in a restaurant” says Cammas, “and they measure the chandeliers. Two stars? Three stars? Who really cares? It should all be about the food.” They’re getting there……..

I love ambling through Whitecross Street market, mid-morning, when the traders are sizzling onions, slicing lemongrass and swearing at the pigeons — in equal measure. Apart from the fact that most of the food isn’t ready to buy, it’s the best time to look around the market without bumping into the slow moving traffic of curry-seeking suits and quinoa-craving hipsters. There’s been traders at Whitecross Street since the 17th century but, by the 19th century, the area was a by-word for poverty and alcoholic depravation. Unfair really — it was just the ‘morning after’ the City-wide piss up that was London’s Victorian gin epidemic.

The area still gets a bit Crimewatch on the weekends, especially outside Waitrose, with kids swirling around on BMXs and hatchbacks gobbing out rap music. And if you want a snapshot of the ravages of generations of alcohol abuse then do pop into the Whitecross Street Wetherspoons – anytime from 9am – which is, incidentally, the city’s best value old people’s home. But if it’s not social anthropology you’re after, you come to Whitecross Street to eat the food.

There’s Wholefood Heaven, who won the Best Main Dish at last year’s British Street Food Awards. And Luardo’s, proving the real depth and diversity of Mexican food. But new kid on the block is Andy Waugh, with his Wild Game Co serving up top-notch game, mostly in the form of sausage and stew, for a little over a fiver. As he says, “There’s a demand for upmarket food here. I’m going to step it up this year with a stunning steak and chips, which will be a bit more expensive. People here don’t mind paying for quality”.

The history of this particular game stand is as rich as the Wild Game Co venison stew. For over 30 years Andy’s family have been butchering game at their farm in the Scottish village of Ardgay, 45 minutes north of Inverness. During summer holidays away from university Andy worked at the family farm, learning about the business, but found himself in the capital working a string of ‘City’ jobs, none of which he could get too excited about. Increasingly, he was taking orders for his family’s superior meat on the side. “One thing led to another,” says Andy, and in August 2010 The Wild Game Co was born.

Game is still seen as rich man’s food. The perception is that it’s ‘snobby’. But Andy’s charming and animated approach is starting to bring the meat of the field to a wider audience. When I met him, just before the lunchtime rush on a wet Friday, his grill was lined with game sausages and a huge hunk of venison steak. They are the best sellers, but — as we talked — he took orders for pigeon (let’s call it the market trader’s revenge) and partridge.The venison steak was sliced from a huge sizzling haunch (the buttock and thigh meat) — it’s a much less active muscle than shoulder or leg, meaning it can be cooked quickly, and served rare. The result was a soft, juicy and sweet-tasting steak that caused no problems for plastic cutlery.

As well as trading good volumes of steak salads, pigeon sandwiches and fresh meat to cook at home from his daily market stall, Andy co-runs the ‘part-time’ restaurant in Islington’s Chapel Market with seafood caterers Bonnie Gull Ltd. An old-school pie and mash shop in the day, replete with wooden booths, marble tables and artisan tiled walls, the diner is transformed by the flicker of candle light into the Bonnie & Wild. Here, head chef Iain Sim, of Edinburgh’s award winning Mussel Inn, offers a three course set menu for £29, consisting of a mixture of game and seafood dishes ranging from barbecued razor clams to pan-fried wild Scottish girolles.

★★★★

Lunch £5-7; you can find The Wild Game Co at the lunchtime market on Whitecross Street (EC1) Monday to Friday, Broadway Market (E8) on Saturdays and the The Bonnie & Wild at 71 Chapel Market (N1) on Friday and Saturday evenings.

Her accuracy rate is 95%. Most trend forecasters aren’t in business long enough to even have an accuracy rate. That’s why IBM, American Express and McDonalds fall over themselves to employ her. In America, Popcorn is chat-show famous. Even Oprah wanted to meet the 60-year-old woman who predicted the success of four-wheel drive vehicles and the failure of New Coke. Popcorn was the first to identify the stay-at-home syndrome (which she called ‘cocooning’) and the growth in home delivery, home business and home shopping. Back in 1981 she told companies that, because we were ‘cocooning’, we would buy more Haagen-Dazs and babygros. She was right.

Popcorn’s methods are suitably futuristic. To research ideas she conducts ‘Hypnotrend Probes’, which regress volunteers under hypnosis. After they have signed a release form, of course. She has even employed psychics. “I’m not like Nancy Reagan. I don’t interview psychics, and then predict what’s going to happen. I’m more interested in how people in general feel about psychics”. So it’s no surprise to discover she has a Third Eye – although you wouldn’t know it to look at her. It exists in only a ‘spiritual’ way. “Every culture talks about an extra sense. Having a Third Eye is like being in the present, but seeing from the future”. Let’s just say that Popcorn is open to whatever is out there.

When I predict rends, it’s hardly “buckle up – we’re on our way to tomorrowland.” I mean, I’ve got a reasonable success rate. I can show you the press cuttings. But I can’t get too excited about this new branch of what’s now being called social anthropology. I need a mission statement that will appeal to the American self-improvement tradition. The same tradition that underpinned Chicken Soup For The Soul, and Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And a new name. Richard Johnson is just too dull. “We sell okay in Britain” says Popcorn. “But in Britain you don’t think you need to look forward. Even to tomorrow.”

Popcorn has become a multimillionaire by painstakingly identifying the societal trends of the future, and then giving them cutesy little names. There’s ‘99 Lives’ (we’ll all be busy), ‘Egonomics’ (we’ll all be selfish) and ‘Fantasy Adventure’ (we’ll all be wearing hiking boots). “The 17 trends we have right now seem to be pretty stable” says Popcorn. “If I see something that I cannot fit into the 17 trends, I hang on to it. That will kick me into another trend.” Critics say she is merely selling the blindingly obvious. “Well” she says, “Fortune 500 Chairmen don’t think it’s so obvious” says Popcorn. “Otherwise why would they pay me so much money?”

Here are some of my best guesses for next year. Olive Magazine’s 2012 Food Predictions. If they’re correct, I’ll remind you about them in 12 months time……

Oliver is a burger aficionado. Which is why he featured Yianni, from the Meatwagon, in the opening episode of his recent series on Channel 4. But Oliver wasn’t keen on the processed cheese that Yianni used to finish his burgers. “I got it, I got, I got it, and then there were a couple of little clangers at the end. The bread for a start, but that was a smaller clanger than the cheese. I get that it’s there to give a synthetic feeling to [the burger]. But the burger doesn’t taste synthetic. So why do it?”

Oliver’s series was a televisual study of multiculturalism and the ethnicity of modern British food. Sounds heavy – something for the Open University. But not when its done the Jamie Oliver way. “I loved going up to Brits and saying, ‘You know your fish and chips? Down the seafront – newspaper and a nice bit of cod? Well, you’ve got the Portuguese to thank for that. The chips come from the French. And the slice of apple pie? That’s down to the Egyptians. Aren’t we lucky? They’re all ours now.”

The idea of looking at the ‘Britishness’ of our food came from a conversation with his mates – that’s how things start in the world of Jamie Oliver. And talk turned to the Olympics. “In 2012” he says, “the whole world will be looking at this country. But the only work I’ve done in Britain has been about what we’re bad at. So I wanted to make a show that was a bit of a British pat on the back. We deserve it. The way our food has changed in the last 15 years has been phenomenal.”

Part of that success has been down to our willingness to learn from other cultures. It’s something that makes Oliver proud to be British. “Go to Italy, France or Spain,” he says, “and you won’t see a Greek restaurant next to a Turkish restaurant next to a Chinese, an Indian, a Japanese and a Moroccan. You won’t see waves of new immigrants doing their thing, like the banh mi sandwich people on London’s Whitecross Street. Never, never, never.”

While filming Jamie’s Britain, he was most excited by a Yemeni community, cooking with saffron and fennel seeds, who specialised in fermented batters and flavoured yoghurts. “But they were only 400 metres away from my restaurant in Cardiff” he says. And he found a new wave of British cooks that are starting to celebrate their Indian regionality, whether it’s Gujarat or Goa. “That is a reflection of the maturity of an immigrant group. Brilliant.”

As always, Oliver’s cooking tips are simple, and easy to remember – like the way he makes batter with a single cup of milk and a single cup of flour. No scales. And he presents the tips in the language we all use. When he makes a dressing to “pimp” his salad – “to spank it, and wake it up in the morning” – he comes across as a down-to-earth cheeky chappy who would be a lot of fun on a night out. For one of the world’s richest chefs, that’s quite an achievement.

And he is always respectful. He never confuses his passion with a need to shout, or put people down, even though he grew up in the heat of a kitchen. It wouldn’t fit with his celebration of food. “I don’t like chefs that go round shouting and swearing” he says. “If they treated my students like that they would get pans round their heads. You can’t do it. Working with kids that have had a difficult time, you can’t bully them because that’s all they’ve ever had. You’ve got to make it as fun as possible.”