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.

Cookery Book of the Year Award
Bocca by Jacob Kennedy (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Couture Chocolate by William Curley (Jacqui Small)
Short & Sweet by Dan Lepard (Fourth Estate)
Veggiestan by Sally Butcher (Pavilion)

Derek Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing or Broadcasting
Alex Renton for work published in The Times and The Observer and broadcast on The Culture Show (BBC Two)
www.fishfight.net and Hugh’s Fish Fight presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Keo Films for Channel 4)
The Food Programme: The Price of Food presented by Dan Saladino (BBC Radio 4)

Evelyn Rose Award for Cookery Journalist of the Year
Diana Henry for work published in The Sunday Telegraph’s Stella magazine
Lucas Hollweg for work published in The Sunday Times’ Style magazine
Yotam Ottolenghi for work published in The Guardian’s Weekend magazine

Food Blog of the Year Award
Sponsored by Sacla’
Eat Like a Girl (www.eatlikeagirl.com) by Niamh Shields
The English Can Cook (www.marmitelover.blogspot.co.uk) by Kerstin Rodgers
Poires au Chocolat (www.poiresauchocolat.net) by Emma Gardner

Food Book of the Year Award
Food Britannia by Andrew Webb (Random House)
Scottish Seafood by Catherine Brown (Birlinn)
Street Food Revolution by Richard Johnson (Kyle Cathie)

Food Broadcast of the Year Award
Hugh’s Fish Fight presented by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (Keo Films for Channel 4)
Jerusalem on a Plate presented by Yotam Ottolenghi (Keo Films for BBC Four)
The Food Programme: Food Icons: George Perry-Smith, presented by Simon Parkes (BBC Radio 4)

Food Journalist of the Year Award
Sponsored by Schwartz
Tim Hayward for work published in Observer Food Monthly and the Financial Times
Christopher Hirst for work published in The Independent and The Independent on Sunday
Tom Parker Bowles for work published in Live magazine in the Mail on Sunday

Food Magazine or Section of the Year Award
Sponsored by Tenderstem®
Fire & Knives, edited by Tim Hayward
Food and Travel, edited by Alex Mead
The Jellied Eel, edited by Ben Reynolds

Jeremy Round Award for Best First Book
Bryn’s Kitchen by Bryn Williams (Kyle Books)
Good Things To Eat by Lucas Hollweg (Collins)
How To Make Bread by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou (Ryland Peters & Small)

Kate Whiteman Award for Work on Food and Travel
In at the Deep End: Cooking Fish Venice to Tokyo by Jake Tilson (Quadrille)
Jerusalem on a Plate presented by Yotam Ottolenghi (Keo Films for BBC Four)
Two Greedy Italians presented by Antonio Carluccio and Gennaro Contaldo (Fresh One for BBC Two)

Michael Smith Award for Work on British Food
A Cook’s Year in a Welsh Farmhouse by Elisabeth Luard (Bloomsbury)
Peyton and Byrne British Baking by Oliver Peyton (Square Peg)
Work published in the Birmingham Post by Richard McComb

Miriam Polunin Award for Work on Healthy Eating
The Food Programme: The Calorie presented by Sheila Dillon (BBC Radio 4)
The Food Programme: Transfats presented by Sheila Dillon (BBC Radio 4)
The Skinny French Kitchen by Harry Eastwood (Bantam Press)

New Media of the Year Award
www.bbcgoodfood.com
www.timeout.com/london/restaurants and Time Out: Things To Do: London (iPhone App)
www.thetimes.co.uk/food
thefoodiebugle.com

Restaurant Reviewer of the Year Award
John Walsh for work published in The Independent magazine
Matthew Norman for work published in the Daily Telegraph’s Weekend
Tracey MacLeod for work published in The Independent magazine

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.

I love streetfood. It’s fresh, quick, no-fuss food which costs a tenth of the stuff you find in restaurants. And there’s never this ‘queue for a table’ malarkey, because quite simply, there are no tables. Whether you’re pulling up to a roadside stall in North Thailand for a dried-fish snack, swigging oysters at Borough Market, or being hankered at from left, right and centre by traders in Marrakech offering ‘the best tagine in town’, there’s always enough street for everyone to enjoy their food. So when I arrived as a student in Cardiff three years ago, I was blown away by its thriving street-food scene: the stuff, it appears, making Wales the best home nation when it comes to ethical and sustainable eating.

One of the key figures in the city’s growing street-food frenzy is Deri Reed (above). He’s a local trader who works to bring better, more sustainable and ethical food to the Welsh public. You can’t step into a vegetarian restaurant without hearing his nickname – The Ethical Chef. During the week, Deri works on Blaencamel Farm in South Wales in exchange for produce to supply his stall at the Riverside Market in Cardiff. His is the first stall in Wales to be accredited by the Sustainable Restaurant Association (SRA) and it’s here that he becomes ‘The Ethical Chef’, cooking up food that is healthy (albeit the Beetroot and Chocolate Cake is a slice of gluttony), vegetarian and sourced within a 50 mile radius. Now he’s getting mobile. By travelling to his customers, he’s generating much less waste and emitting fewer greenhouse gases than if they were all to travel to him.

Steve Garrett, Riverside Community Market Association’s (RCMA) chairperson, plans to deliver ethical and sustainable street-food to more and more people in and around Cardiff. Like ‘The Ethical Chef’, Steve and his team have plans to create a travelling street food van, that distributes not only fresh fruit and vegetables, but ready-meals made from organic ingredients, sourced from Welsh farms and local businesses, which can be parked at the end of just about any street in Cardiff. His vision is to create a real movement towards street-food, similar to the one which has already begun in places such as Los Angeles. The task, Steve says, is really very simple: ‘All we need to do, as a community, is reclaim our public spaces. Think of St Mary Street in the city centre. The whole place has recently been renovated and would be perfect for a collection of street-food stalls. And that’s what RCMA plan to do.”

And it’s not just in Cardiff. It’s everywhere. I visited Abergavenny Food Festival last September and met the winners of last year’s British Street Food Awards: Café Mor. They’re dedicated to supplying seashore foraged ingredients and fresh local seafood from the Pembrokeshire coast at markets and festivals across the country. And in London, Squid And Pear, the first street-food stall to be acknowledged by the SRA, deliver ‘top-notch seasonal and sustainable catering’ to just about anywhere in the UK. Now if that’s not “street” ( urban dictionary definition: “awesone”, “fly”) then I don’t know what is…

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.

Jamie Oliver must rank quite high on the hit list of large multinational food corps in the UK and the USA after all his healthy eating shenanigans. Siobhan O’Neill, a journalist specialising in school dinners, catering and hospitality, is pretty sure that several members of LACA (the Local Authority Caterers’ Association) would have happily painted a target on his back. But not any more. Here Siobhan looks to the future……

When the government reacted to Oliver’s school dinner revolution by imposing strict nutritional standards on both primary and secondary schools, LACA – understandably – panicked. The initially introduced food standards had seen their meal uptake numbers plummet, particularly in secondary schools where hungry teens were big fans of the much maligned Turkey Twizzler — or the traditional burger and chips dinner.

It didn’t help that secondary schools were not, usually, nice places to eat lunch. Poor investment in infrastructure means canteens are tatty and unwelcoming. Lunchtimes have been cut dramatically – often to less than 40 minutes – so getting 1000+ kids through the tills with time to spare to actually eat requires a battle strategy so impressive the MOD should consider having a word with their local dinner lady.

So when the nutritional standards were imposed and schools caterers were convinced the only way to meet those standards was to make kids eat a set, sit-down meal, they thought the death knell was sounding for their service. Many schools let their kids out at lunchtimes and the local takeaways were rubbing their hands in glee.

Meanwhile manufacturers like McCain – suppliers of Ben Nevis amounts of chips to the schools – were also wondering what the changes would mean for them, now fries were virtually banned from the menu. But strangely enough, innovation around the street-food revolution stepped up to save the day.

Recognising a need for ‘grab ‘n’ go’ food for time-pressed, brand aware kids, that was quick and simple for school caterers to prepare and serve, yet simultaneously met the nutritional standards, manufacturers got clever and created a whole new generation of street-food style offerings (see the funky pasta rig above) that mimic the kinds of takeaway stuff kids love. And yet it’s healthy and tasty.

If you walk into your local secondary school now, chances are you’ll see kids eating a range of pasta or noodle pots, curries, pizza slices, sub-style hot sandwiches, slushies, smoothies, shakes, lollies, baguettes, pretzels and hot and cold wraps; all designed to be eaten on the move, and all meeting the strict nutritional standards.

It’s making the distinction between junk food and fast food. Yes these are all food items designed to be held in the hand and eaten on the go, but it all adheres to 17 strict guidelines on salt, fat, sugar, fibre, vitamins, minerals, iron and calcium content. And studies from the School Food Trust are beginning to demonstrate that kids who eat this nutritionally balanced food are showing improvements in their concentration and behaviour, and therefore their results.

Not only that but kids love them – often because they’re branded fast food style items just like the stuff they pick up on the high street. And some have even set up Facebook fan pages dedicated to their favourite pasta pots. Remarkably it’s a win, win, win for everyone, and to prove the point meal uptakes are increasing year on year. Suppliers, school caterers, schools, kids and the government are all feeling pretty happy about it. Who would have thought we’d have the humble street-food stall to thank for it?  

Every once in a while you stumble across something special. Something that hasn’t already been flagged up by an army of bloggers and trend analysts. Ananda Pellerin, who writes a regular food column called The Hunger, had her epiphany in London’s Chinatown. With — of all things — a steamed bun. Photos: Neil Wissink

We came to the cha siu bao (pork bun) stall at Newport Court in Chinatown via a vegetarian friend of ours. Victoria, who had lived in Beijing, sussed out that their veggie buns were the cheapest and best no-meat mini-meal in central London. We followed her, politely agreed, and then quickly moved on to the pork.

Located outside the Yang Guang supermarket, whose staff man the small operation, this Cantonese bun stall ‘sans nom’ has elicited excitement of late from savvy street food aficionados. You never have to wait long because the idea is simple and easy to deliver: large steamed buns filled with well-seasoned barbecued pork, ordered quickly and eaten on the spot.

The bread-like buns are sticky and unassuming, so it’s hard not to feel a small thrill when you take your first bite and the steam pours out, only to reveal the hearty filling inside. For a no-meat option, the chive and egg and vegetable buns are deliciously seasoned as well. Satisfying and cheap, at £1.50 a pop our only regret is that the stall isn’t still open after last orders.

Across town, in the Broadway Market Schoolyard, Yum Bun have made a name for themselves with Taiwanese buns inspired by Momofuku’s take on gua bao. Founders Lisa Meyer and Jacob Walters have been keeping East Londoners happily fed since September 2010. But now they’re spreading the love, and sell at the Eat Street Market in Kings Cross on Thursdays.

Free range Blythburgh pork  from The Rare Breed Meat Company is served with chives, cucumbers and hoisin sauce, on a light and fluffy open bun made from organic flour. You can taste the fine quality of the slow-cooked belly as it melts in your mouth, while the Portobello mushroom and walnut bun is almost as meaty and just as rewarding.

Catherine Kilgour is one half of Scottish caterers Wild Rover Food. But apart from travelling around in her trusty old (1961!) Series 2 Land Rover, and sourcing food directly from local farms and hedgerows, Catherine is a writer. And she wanted to let the BSFA know who she fancies for the Best Street Food Market in the 2012 Awards….

Public spaces, when they’re used well, can generate social cohesion and a sense of community spirit; when they’re not used well, however, they suffer from antisocial behaviour and environmental neglect. That was what was happening in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge town: it was what every budding Landscape Architect dreads – ‘dead space’.

That was until last September, when the heroic Beth Berry opened Stockbridge Market in Jubilee Gardens, and filled it full of traders. I say ‘heroic’ because it took Beth two years and the patience of a foodie saint to get permission from Edinburgh Council. And I say ‘full’ because Jubilee Gardens wasn’t just hosting pigeons last Sunday – there were crowds of people.

Now you’d be forgiven – on initial inspection – for thinking Stockbridge was a Farmer’s Market, for it has its organic vegetable stalls, farm meat and artisan bread. But there is a range of traders contributing to the ‘buzz’: Ridley’s Game and Fish dealers, all the way from Hexham; Vintage Remix with its range of vinyl refashioned artworks; and Street Food in Scotland.

Nestled nicely between the preserves and pickles, there were no less than five street food traders busily selling last Sunday. Kaori Tsuji-Simpson of the Harajuku Kitchen (above) is bringing her third-generation Japanese food from the kitchens of her 76 year old mother’s restaurant (still cooking) to the street scene. Kaori cooks up Udon noodles, dumplings and miso soup.

“My inspiration comes from the streets of Harajuku itself”, she tells me. “It’s a very passionate, artistic place — a bit like London’s Soho. My great grandfather was a Samurai, and when they were abolished he converted his home into a traditional Japanese restaurant, with Geishas and dancing. That was the start of our family’s cooking tradition.”

Just along from Harajuku Kitchen, Rachna Dheer is also sharing her childhood memories through freshly-cooked food from the Babu Bombay Street Kitchen. Nearly a year on from her first customer, Rachna is now pretty much running an Indian deli. “We’ve got chutneys and marinades,” she says, “chai masala, savoury cakes and tiffin — as well as fresh hot food.”

Stockbridge now has more than 40 traders. “We’ve survived the winter,” Beth smiles, “and we’re planning to start Thursday trading as soon as we’re into the sunnier evenings.” That should go down well with the local shops – they’ve never been busier. With Jubilee Gardens firmly back in the public realm, let’s hope it goes down well with the Council too.