Street food. You know it's all over when...

[Jon Tseng]

... Two Sunday supplements run the same article, on the same day, highlighting the same trend, plugging the same burger wagon and featuring the same BBQ burger recipe:

Edit: I've just noticed they're both actually by the same journalist! Tell you what if I was the features editor at the Guardian or the Indy I'd be asking for my fee back! (links amended to reflect this)

The Guardian: Street food: the latest rage; Richard Johnson

The Independent: Van-tastic! Why street food is this year’s hottest trend; Richard Johnson

The irony is that both recipes manage to miss out the steaming-cloche action which is what gives Yianni's burgers much of their melty loveliness (maybe it doesn't work on a grill?).

On a positive note Meatwagon is back in residence in Peckham Rye which means its a quick jog down the road from me! Popped in on Friday night and the mushroom swiss was delicious.

Ta

J

Edited June 19, 2011 by Jon Tseng (log)

[sunbeam]

If they were in the colour mags then lead times mean they may have been written a while back. Mind you I was sick of hearing about burgers months ago anyway. Mince in a bun, wow.

Props to the journo tho, getting paid twice for the same piece is as good as it gets.

S

[PhilD]

I am really looking forward to my next trip to Britain, it seems that it is now easy to find great food on every street corner - why do you think most of his examples are in London? It's also really good to hear that you can get good fish & chips in a seaside town like Southwold who would have guessed - a real food revolution.

[Jon Tseng]

I am really looking forward to my next trip to Britain, it seems that it is now easy to find great food on every street corner - why do you think most of his examples are in London? It's also really good to hear that you can get good fish & chips in a seaside town like Southwold who would have guessed - a real food revolution.

Oho sadly not. There is good street food to be found provided you are prepared to a) check well in advance, b) trek halfway across town and c) be prepared for occasional disappointment. So not that much different from Michelin starred dining then.

A case in point was last Saturday when I spend much of the morning trekking up the northern line, across the central line sitting on a bus and schlepping down a canal to get to Broadway Market (http://www.broadwaymarket.co.uk/) specifically so I could track down Yum Buns (http://www.yumbun.co.uk/) who claim to make Momofuku-style pork buns. In reality it wasn't a patch on the real thing - three quid for a small slice of pork belly, a dab of hoison, some cucumber slices and a bit of spring onion. Having had the real thing and done the recipe at home many times I was left thinking "is this it??". Waste of a Saturday morning.

Similarly Banh Mi 11 on Broadway Market attracts raves but myself and my friends agree, the ones from Banh Mi Bay in Holborn are by far better (although from a shop not a cart).

My suspicion is that at least half of the street food hype is generated by journos who want something to write about. The problem is while a lot of the nuevo street food is perfectly decent by the time its been written up on half a dozen blogs/broadsheets you turn up expected the moon, which makes it very hard to exceed expectations.

J

[sunbeam]

Bloggers tend to have no calibration and rave about any old thing as long as they feel they have discovered it first. They are stamp collectors really.

Street food doesnt really work when the streets are full of rubbish and half the time wet and windy!

Fish and chips? Well with the price of cod these days its a luxury item.

The idea that seaside towns do best fish n chips is something of a romantic ideal. The cod was probably caught off the coast of Spain! Go for what is really local like mussels and crabs in Dorset etc

S

[IanT]

Similarly Banh Mi 11 on Broadway Market attracts raves but myself and my friends agree, the ones from Banh Mi Bay in Holborn are by far better (although from a shop not a cart).

That's interesting Jon. We tasted pretty much every banh mi in London last year (plus some of the best in Sydney, Melbourne and New York - my fiancee is Vietnamese and we wanted to do our own stand at Borough with Ginger Pig pork, home made pickles etc, shame the Trustees turned us down...) and thought the Broadway Market stand the best in London. I tried their new shop in Islington two weeks ago and it is also very good. Much better than my one visit to Banh Mi Bay, I live around the corner so will give it another chance.

Hope you are well by the way!

Ian

[kayb]

... Two Sunday supplements run the same article, on the same day, highlighting the same trend, plugging the same burger wagon and featuring the same BBQ burger recipe:

Edit: I've just noticed they're both actually by the same journalist! Tell you what if I was the features editor at the Guardian or the Indy I'd be asking for my fee back! (links amended to reflect this)

The Guardian: Street food: the latest rage; Richard Johnson

The Independent: Van-tastic! Why street food is this year’s hottest trend; Richard Johnson

There's an easy enough answer for why it goes in two supplements at the same time. If you'll look at the pieces, you'll see the reporter is ID'd as being with the Observer. Observer pays him, runs it first, then puts it out on the news service wire to which they subscribe (Reuters, AP, whatever), and other papers are free to pick it up for the price of their subscription to said wire. Pretty common journalism practice.

It just sucks when you run a feature in a supplement the same day your competitor (if they're competitors) does.

[PhilD]

... Two Sunday supplements run the same article, on the same day, highlighting the same trend, plugging the same burger wagon and featuring the same BBQ burger recipe:

Edit: I've just noticed they're both actually by the same journalist! Tell you what if I was the features editor at the Guardian or the Indy I'd be asking for my fee back! (links amended to reflect this)

The Guardian: Street food: the latest rage; Richard Johnson

The Independent: Van-tastic! Why street food is this year’s hottest trend; Richard Johnson

There's an easy enough answer for why it goes in two supplements at the same time. If you'll look at the pieces, you'll see the reporter is ID'd as being with the Observer. Observer pays him, runs it first, then puts it out on the news service wire to which they subscribe (Reuters, AP, whatever), and other papers are free to pick it up for the price of their subscription to said wire. Pretty common journalism practice.

It just sucks when you run a feature in a supplement the same day your competitor (if they're competitors) does.

So nothing to do with the Richard's new book then...?