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Street Food

Annette Curtain

By Annette Curtain
in The Lounge

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El Pibe

El Pibe

Posted
Posted

So in every single country in the world the fare on offer from street vendors is a point of cultural pride, but here its a sign of breakdown of the old order and some sort of putrid hipster, aspirant class stigma, which should be countered by buying flavourless, generic pre-packaged food from the fridge of an acceptable, yet characterless national chain.


Should we bolster this by lamenting the emergerence over the last decade or so of beer with some discernible flavour by stubbornly washing it down with some tepid John Smiths in a can or a nice crisp Castlemain XXXX?


ps, just in case you missed it the 4 Xes are really another word and there's an implicit comma before it, think alliteration ;-P

numbers

numbers

Posted
Posted

edcam Wrote:

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> It's generally far from cheap though. Restaurant

> priced food that you have to stand and eat in the

> street served from a hygienically questionable

> van? No thanks.


well its clearly not for everyone but you might as well say 'restaurant-quality' food as 'restaurant-priced'. I've got a huge amount of respect for the hard-working,dedicated street food sellers who focus on quality and provenance. You can tell that some of them really care so much about what they are doing, its really admirable.


and we get to try some really lovely different types of food. It's nice to treat yourself to something new to try. Although I've had a disappointing experience too with one that didn't live up to the hype. Same can happen with restaurants tho.

StraferJack

StraferJack

Posted
Posted

I'm sure there are some people who go because it's "uber cool" but ultimately very few. It's YOU who is sticking labels edcam et al


people go because it's a lot tastier and not much more expensive than the shite in pret/eat/greggs and the rest of them


iTake my example of rib man - go buy one of his rib rolls - ?6. taste the fekking thing. Now tell me where I can go to buy that amount of food, for that price, with that taste


your example is ginsters? It's an embarrasing argument.


You are streotyping, sneering and not even trying to understand.


People still go to fish and chip shops or sandwich shops - basically street food ("open or wrapped love?") - but you aren't banging on about them


as for hygene, one of the stallholders posted on the link I quote above:

"Hi


As a food vendor on North Cross Road market, I would just like to explain the measures we put in place to ensure the food is safe.


All food vendors should be registered with the Food Safety Team - and are then subject to inspection of both their kitchen facilities and their stall conditions and practices. They should also have a level 2 food hygiene certificate which ensures that they are aware of all the precautions that need to be taken to ensure that food is safe.


We are required to fill out records of cooking, cooling and reheating times, core temperatures and refrigeration and freezer temperatures. Food kept at the stall therefore needs to be kept either in a fridge or a coolbox, with a temperature below 8 degrees. Small amounts of cold food should be put on display at any one time, and topped up with food from the coolbox/fridge.


Hot food needs to be kept at a minimum temperature of 68 degrees - so hot food vendors should have a food thermometer to hand.


The last thing we would want to do is put our customers at risk of food poisoning, so we take extreme in care in adhering to the rules in keeping food out of the 'danger zone'. Obviously, we can't speak for other traders, but I did just want to reassure our customers that our food is perfectly safe!


"

Burbage

Burbage

Posted
Posted

El Pibe Wrote:

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> all those years of chips and curry sauce from the

> chip van outside of the pub, I didn't realise I

> was actually being a pretentious arse; always glad

> to be set straight by the better informed among

> us.


Not pretentious? Chips and curry sauce? You don't know you're born, mate. When I were a lad, the only street food was pavement pizza, and that was a treat. Most nights we'd have nowt but dog-ends and go to bed dreaming of roadkill.

KidKruger

KidKruger

Posted
Posted

El Pibe: "anything near st paul's? The choice around here is truly awful."


I'm there this week and it's dire IMO.

Best I've found near St. Paul's is a Korean cafe off Ludgate Circus, they do a tray of different stuff for like ?6.50, not gonna change your life but better than the 'Earl of Sandwich' which charges ?5 per sandwich. It's not 'street' though.


Incidentally, street food - one of the attractions for me is there's no admin (waiting to be seated/acknowledged, ordering from menu, over-priced drinks, breads, side-dishes, asking for this/that, requesting bill, waiting for bill, waiting for waiter to come collect/return your card).

In Asia though, I eat almost entirely at night / food markets or street stalls - like the rest of the populace.

Jeremy

Jeremy

Posted
Posted

I work near Whitecross Street - where you can get burritos, falafel wraps, curries, thai food, huge roast meat rolls, and all sorts of stuff for around ?5-?6. An equivalent amount of food from Pret (i.e. a sandwich and some sort of side) would be similar.


The restaurant comparison doesn't stack up either, I can't think of anywhere other than McDs/KFC where you can sit and eat hot food for that sort of money.

MrBen

MrBen

Posted
Posted

El Pibe Wrote:

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> There's an increasing gaggle of posters on here

> who make it hard to summon the will to live.


I was just about to post the same. Before gnawing my fist off and dipping my stump of a wrist into a jar of lemon juice.

True, the recent UK street food trend has partly been accelerated by hipsters (authentic etc etc), BUT it also tallies with the general increased interest in food quality and provenance and the price we pay for that.


I just like street food for it's entrepreneurialism. The recent trend/awareness has allowed people who had good innovative and creative offerings but lacked the funds, history, credit, scale etc to invest in a full on restaurant, to start trading. They're micro-businesses. And like any business they'll stand or fall based on their quality.


Either way, its a great stepping stone to road test something before going larger. Some have (Meat Mission etc), some will fail, some will just be happy as they are. If it increases choice and brings new and exotic choices to a London thats lived on Ginsters pasties for 40 years AND and helps people start up in business then what's not to like?

fishbiscuits

fishbiscuits

Posted
Posted

UncleBen Wrote:

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> It's the ridiculous description calling what you

> have described above as 'street food', just to

> make it/yourself/said activity sound less boring

> and humdrum. I might pop out and have some

> 'premises food' later, or i may stay in and have

> 'home kitchen' food.


What are the alternatives?

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