Displaying items by tag: street food

I just got in from a day at The Suffolk Show and have to tell you about E8, a new Suffolk street food trader. I had the shoulder of lamb in a rosemary brioche bun with homemade relishes, salad and pickled shallots.  The only thing that came in on the back of a lorry was the Colmans mustard, and even us Ipswich Town supporters can just about allow that. You'll find them in Eat Street at the show tomorrow.

A late arrival got us both in for a fiver (you have to pay for this one...) but most of the food people were still there. What a proliferation of pickles! Lots of the same thing (of the chili jelly/home-made tomato ketchup variety) with one or two interesting exceptions - home made drinks and hot food, and lots of suppliers from Essex. But we love Abroad, and of course Essex gave us Jamie Oliver. We tried ice-cream, crisps, chocolate, strawberry and raspberry vodkas (although they weren't keen on Inspector X's horseradish vodka suggestion...) rhubarb and ginger cordial, fresh lemonade (so easy, so nice) and a shark kebab (very close to my Caribbean heart...shark kebabs...)

Oh the choice? Where to go first? With so many foodie things on one day we did an extensive expensive dash around the county - first to Orford where we knew we were going to find treats because they have the Pump Street Bakery and Pinneys and then to the Greene King Beer Festival (they may have had food but it was more about the beer...)

At Orford I spent £80 in as many yards, starting with a fab strawberry tart (well, half of one, because even Inspector X and I can only eat so much in one day...) followed by (half) a pulled pork wrap with coleslaw, the best salami we have tried in a while, an oyster, a Bloody Awkward (which regular followers of suffolkfoodie will know is an espresso with hot milk on the side - ie a SMALL coffee not a GIANT coffee, in fact I think it's called a cafe con leche Abroad, but is still to catch on here...) Where was I... a chocolate mousse and a dessert wine. What we couldn't eat we bought home - two bottles of Hill Farm oil, two Hill Farm mayo, a pheasant scotch egg, a fennel salami, honey-salted caramels, peanut brittle; doughnuts, a bears paw (more later on that one...) portuguese tarts and some other little tarts with almond and plum whose name I've forgotten, hot mint jelly, three crabs and two huge skate wings. The only thing missing at Orford was hot food and a home-made drinks.

In the next few days we will tell you what we bought in BSE and show you ALL the sumptuous pictures of the food we found.

Canadian Shelley Miller has moved on from icing cakes to decorating the walls of her home town.

Here is the link for next years nominations... and you can see who won this year. 

Here is the pizza-in-a-horsebox stall at Shoreditch Festival, although the biggest queue was outside the Caribbean food trailer. Was that because theirs is the most tasty? Was it because they had a sizzling jerk chicken barbecue on a very hot day, or was it because the girl who was supposed to be serving customers was texting all her friends? Anyway, we had the very nice beef stew and rice from Ghana. But while we're on the subject of street food - take a look at the Evening Standard list of 20 'guerilla grillers and breakaway bakers' here in the Capital.

A visit to Cro-o-mer would not be complete without going to the Bob Davies Crab Shop in The Gangway, these crabs are famous for being among the best you can buy. Watch Gary Rhodes with Bob Davies, showing Gary how to prepare them in his shop. I made my two huge dressed crabs into Crab Linguine for the whole family.  You can find the recipe along with others on our recipe page here,

This three hour tour takes you through the foodie paradise of Bethnal Green in East London - from the famous and beautiful Columbia Rd flower market for fresh morning coffee and pastries from Italy,  to Brick Lane, the home of curry, with foodie stops all the way.  Jamie Oliver comes here to buy his Vietnamese street food and even the kebab vans are good.  So we can try fresh oysters; beigels stuffed with salt beef or smoked salmon, traditional Cockney pie, mash and eels and home made baklava - from the traditional shops that have been here for years, and from the fabulous new street food vendors that cook here at the weekend.

The tour is £10 per person, runs most Saturdays and Sundays and meets at Hoxton station. You buy your own food throughout but don't worry, it's mostly under a fiver and you'll easily walk it off! It starts at 11.00am going for coffee, and ends at 2.00pm with whatever you liked best...and there is even a Cockney cashpoint to get your money out in rhyming slang!

Send me a message for details of the next tour dates and how to book.

@ theoldkitchen (fellow tweeter) has quite rightly pointed out the misspelling of the word bagel. So let's be clear - in the USA it's Bagel, in Brick Lane (and Jewish cuisine) it's Beigel -   innit.

From the London Ice Sculpture Festival at Canary Wharf, and there was lots of food too including jerk chicken wraps, curry, a cheese stall and huge meringues.