British Street Food Awards 2010

I always associate mushrooms with autumn – when the ground is deep with leaves, and the air is filled with the smell of bonfires. It’s the best time – just before nature descends into its Winter sleep. But the farmed varieties are available all year round. Which is just as well for the wonderful Sporeboys team on Broadway Market.

I love their mushroom sandwiches. But then mushrooms on toast would probably be my last meal on earth, so I’m a bit biased. Or, if it was my last meal, maybe I would plump for two mushrooms, vast and baked, with their juices spooned over a thick round of sourdough toast. There’s something primal about the deep, farmyard savour. They are natural fast food. Just brush them gently – never wash – trim off their woody stem-ends and fry them quickly in butter and garlic. But Sporeboys don’t need my advice. The are doing everything just perfectly…….

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.