The Yanks Are Coming

Eat Street, the Food Network’s street food series, wanted a BSFA perspective on the capital’s best food trucks when they came to London last week. And I was only to happy to oblige. But they made the mistake of starting their odyssey with Angus and his Kolkata Street Food Experience. The out-of-towners had never seen anything like our Angus, who has his own unique way of dealing with admin and paperwork. When the Eat Street crew didn’t turn up for our pre-arranged 4 o’clock, I got a rather agitated email. “During the shoot with Angus” they wrote, “the police asked us to move along. We were unaware that we were lacking proper permits for filming in the streets — hence the location change.” Apparently, it was like Benny Hill, as the police chased Angus round the perimeter of Holland Park. It will make a lively opening for the programme.

The crew went on to visit Cristiano at The Real Food Market and The Dogfather in the North Cross Road food market in Dulwich. I ended up filming my interview in Broadgate, with Mark and Jun from Street Kitchen – joint-winners of Best Main Dish at this year’s British Street Food Awards. I banged on about how utterly British their food was, down to a Caesar dressing made with Old Winchester rather than Parmesan. They liked the whole “British” angle, and made me do the whole thing again with as much spiffingly British phraseology as I could muster. They liked it when I said “bloody good”. And made me say it twice. When the programme airs (tx on the Food Network sometime around Christmas) expect a git who sounds like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins.