Simple Street Food

March 30, 2015 by Ray Morgan

Simple street food

On Saturday night I found myself in Shoreditch for my friend's gig. I'd had no luck in booking somewhere for dinner, and as we traipsed around we were repeatedly told that it would be at least a two and a half hour wait for tables - including even a simple pizza place!

Now, I don't know about you, but I am not the sort of person who can wait over 2 hours for a pizza. Once I have food in my mind, it's very difficult to shake off the raging hunger - especially as all kinds of delicious foodie smells were wafting out of the restaurants, where the staff solemnly shook their heads at us as we sloped away.

Then, my partner and I spotted what was once a petrol station which now had a huge mural of a petrol pump on the side saying FUEL HERE. It was a car-park sized space surrounded by dozens of food trucks, and simple plastic tables in the middle. It was buzzing: people chatting, music playing, and full of beer tents and trucks selling all kinds of different food.

The sheer body heat of everyone sitting in the middle space, plus the heat from generators, meant that it wasn't cold, and we sat on little stools drinking cold beer and trying to choose which food to eat. When our friends arrived, we produced two extra stools that we'd stowed away under the table, and I ate a delicious mushroom burger loaded with spicy slaw, Swiss cheese, some sort of creamed spinach, and salad. More beers were bought, and it felt like we were at a festival.

As we sat there, taking in our surroundings and laughing with the people next to us who were also saving seats for their friends, I thought about how much better this was than waiting TWO HOURS for a pizza, in a restaurant where it would be so loud we wouldn't be able to hear each other, and paying through the nose before being hurried out. No, here, in the old petrol station, I paid £5 for a delicious burger, and a few quid for a couple of really decent cold beers - beers that I've never had anywhere else but will seek out again. Sometimes, simple really is better, and some of the best foodie experiences are the ones that are unplanned and spontaneous. And instant too!

My top 5 street food experiences

1. Grilled sweetcorn from street corners on Greek islands. Sweet, charred, and running with butter
2. A hummus, salad and pickle pitta in Brick Lane, served with ice-cold watermelon juice
3. When I worked in the Oxo Tower one summer and there was a tropical fruit stand on Bankside
4. Beers and burritos on a fake sandy beach in East London with my Dad
5. The magical mushroom burger from Saturday night of course!