Just a quick note to say that we’ll be invading The Miller, London Bridge this Saturday from 11am – 5pm. It’s a great pub and we’ve teamed up with some nice folk who run a monthly craft fair there so it looks like it’ll be a fun day!

We’ll be serving our full slider menu: Bacon & Kimchi, Cheese & Kimchi, Burgers with Soy Sauce & Wasabi Onions, Pulled Pork w/ Ginger Coleslaw, and of course the inimitable Kimchi Cult Special.

And if that doesn’t tempt you enough, check out the NEAT poster I made for it.

We’ll also be at the Rose & Crown in Walthamstow tonight as usual, Zoo Lates on Friday, and Red Market on Sunday.

More news and a special menu announcement to follow in coming weeks.

If BBQ pork was a Hollywood actor, it would be Sean Penn. There is something very multi-faceted about this way of cooking pork that never feels to amaze me. Each cut has a unique flavour and character of it’s own, and whether it’s grilled, slow cooked or smoked, the integrity of good BBQ pork is quickly recognisable and rarely compromised.

This star quality is quickly gaining recognition in London. Recent months have seen a slew of BBQ related activity in the city. Jamie Oliver recently opened Barbecoa near St Paul’s Cathedral, and Red Dog Saloon is scheduled to open in Shoreditch in June. On the street side of things Anna Mae’s Smoke House continue to do a rocking Pork n’Slaw, and the recently opened Pitt Cue Co. on Southbank is quickly gaining a reputation for some of the best (if a touch pricey) BBQ pork this side of the Atlantic.

A man who needs no convincing on the merits of BBQ is Brick Lane’s Mark Gevaux (AKA The Ribman.) During our own brief stint there, Mark’s was one of the many twitter voices of encouragement spurring us on. Although our two weeks there were too frazzled/stressed/busy to meet in person, we kept up a friendly on line acquaintance nonetheless.

Last Sunday however, I finally made the journey down to Brick Lane to find out a little bit more about the ribs and the man behind them.

A butcher by background, Mark has been barbecuing pork ribs at the council-run end of Brick Lane for the past three years. Although he originally started out selling ribs by the rack, Mark quickly readjusted to sell pulled pork rolls instead. It’s a move that has proved immensely popular: the Ribman routinely sells out by mid afternoon every Sunday.

It’s easy to see why: whole racks of ribs are wrapped in tinfoil and barbecued, then pulled apart by hand and stuffed into large, soft rolls and drizzled with optional hot sauce. The meat comes off the ribs so easily that it’s virtually impossible to witness this spectacle and not want to dive in yourself.

Put simply, it tastes fantastic. Pulled pork can be hard to get right but Mark gets it spot on. The meat is tender, flavourful and obviously benefits from being cooked right on the bone. It also has a curiously light quality to it and goes well with the large, soft roll. Matched with the flavourful yet incendiary hot sauce, it’s a meal that requires no further improvement.

Then there’s Mark himself: passionate, knowledgeable and welcoming – we could have stood and chatted all day about meat, the street food business, and the apprentice, were it not for the mounds of pork that needed imminent selling-out of.

Cheers Ribman – in the words of another Hollywood great, “I’ll be back!”

Things kick off tonight with Tomatu and will reach their peak next Wednesday. In between expect to find some fine tacos, great burgers, and the best Kimchi Sliders this side of the Great Wall!

We’ll be there from 6pm on Thursday so please come say hi!

It’ll be a tag team of street food heavyweights, with a different hawker doing their magic each night until the Meatwagon takes over the kitchen on the 1st of June.

Check out the poster below for the details of week one. We’ll be stepping up to the plate on Thursday 26thMay but will be trying to make as many nights as possible – I’ve eaten at most of these hawker’s stalls and vans before and can say that they are all without exception incredible.

More details at the Eat.St blog.

Last week over twenty vendors hauled their vans and coolboxes to London’s Southbank Centre for the first ever Real Street Food Festival. It was the biggest event Sarah and I have taken part in since going on the road, and was a real baptism of fire. Over the four days we served a heck of a lot of sliders, made loads of new friends, and learned a few hard lessons to boot.

Check out our pics from the event on the other side!

Everybody Loved the Everybody Love Love Express

Fine Pulled Pork from Anna Mae's

Bangin' Burgers from Bhangra Burger!

Choc Star and Lullabelles brought the Suga!

Crepes in a H-Van!

The Healthy Yummies Riot Bus!

Jamon you know you want to!

The Arancini Bros made excellent neighbours!

And of course thanks our wonderful customers and friends who posed for our Royal Wedding Photo Shoot!

If you’ve been lucky enough to eat at Anna Maes in recent months you’ll understand what I’m so excited about. The roving market stall has been transforming Londoners’ lunchtimes with their big, Southern US-style BBQ pulled pork and coleslaw sandwiches. But the road to porcine perfection isn’t easy – when I recently met owners Anna and Tony, I found out that it took a daring career change and an epic inter-state adventure to set them on the right path.

A few years back Anna was looking for something new. She’d given up her job in the woman’s sector and was casting around for a new direction. She tried a few voluntary positions, but started to consider street food when Anna and partner Tony – both long time devotees of Southern food – discovered they were unable to find any good pulled pork in London.

Things gathered pace from there. Anna and Tony became self-confessed “fanatical foodies,” visiting and eating at every market they could. But their real inspiration came at the start of 2011 when the pair undertook an epic 2000 mile journey through the American South West.

This trip of a lifetime took them deep into BBQ country as they traveled from California to Texas, through Arizona and New Mexico.

Whilst there they were consistently impressed by the enthusiasm and culture that surrounds BBQ in the states. As Anna explains, American-style BBQ is different to the British/Australian style. Instead of quickly grilling over an open flame, meat is smoked over an indirect heat for hours. It’s a mixture of Spanish, Native American, Creole and German influences, with sauces ranging from mustard based, tomato, vinegar, to nothing but a dry rub.

It’s this attention to detail and enthusiasm that Anna and Tony put into their food. Their pulled pork is done the American way – in a smoker – and comes out sweet, smoky and tender. The pork is pilled on top of a soft bun, and topped with a crunchy, lively coleslaw and a tangy homemade BBQ sauce. The whole thing equates to a happy handful of southern-style comfort food the bayou would be proud of.

And what does the future hold for Anna Mae’s? Plenty it seems. Their smokey pork goodness can now be at two permanent pitches per week, and they have plenty of events and menu changes in the works to keep things interesting.

Can’t wait to see how they get on.

After approximately 18 months day-dreaming, 1 year saving, and a lot of time blabbering on to anyone who would listen, last weekend Sarah and I finally stepped up and started slinging sliders at Brick Lane. It was nerve-wracking, hard work and fun – and unlike anything I’ve ever done before. But like anything else it was/is a steep learning curve. Click through to find out what I learned on the first day of class.

Stuff

The first thing I learned about is the sheer amount of stuff it takes to operate a street stall. There’s the gas cylinders, cooking equipment and cool boxes of food, but there are also 101 other little things you musn’t forget. Sellotape, cleaning materials, water, scissors, ice blocks for the coolers – all these things are absolutely essential and forgetting one is like brushing past a house of cards.

Consistency

I’m also starting to learn a thing or two about consistency. While it’s easy enough to bang out a dozen meals for friends and family and have everything looking and tasting bloop, doing the same thing under pressure and at speed is a different story. Luckily we kept things simple this time and managed to maintain a good product by taking things as steadily as we could.

People

I’ve had my doubts in the past, but another thing I’ve learned is that most people are…excellent! Except for a pair of drunken arseholes (one on each day) everyone that came up to buy or to chat was really nice and wished us the best of luck. Loads of our friends came down to support us on Saturday and I am overwhelmed by all the people who have gone out of their way to help us get off the ground.

Social Media Rocks

I already knew this,and I realise I’m probably preaching to the converted, but after the weekend my faith in social media has been firmly established. Before I even flipped a slider, I was inundated with messages of support from twitter and facebook, and on the weekend itself I was lucky to have visits from a number of tweeters and bloggers interested in finding out what we were all about – thanks guys!

The Future

Actually I didn’t learn anything about the future. I am however, looking forward to meeting more people, having loads of fun, and bringing out some new slider combinations. I also know that I can’t do it alone, and want to reiterate my thanks to everyone who helped, tasted, tweeted, bought and blogged during our first weekend.

Cheers!

It’s loud, busy and raucous. It’s hours from where I live and hard to find a table. The food comes on paper plates and ordering is by ticket only – it’s also damn damn good. Find out why I’m definitely going back to the #meateasy.

There’s something illicit feeling about visiting #Meateasy. Based in the upstairs of a pub in New Cross, from the outside #Meateasy is non-descript. There are no signs (save a welcome message scrawled on the door) and no other clues to its existence. If you didn’t know, you really wouldn’t know it was there.

Inside couldn’t be more different. The music is loud, sirens wail, orders are shouted and numbers are called. People jostle for tables, cram around the bar and get in each others way. Every few minutes, huge plates of food sweep by then quickly disappear.

I ordered a cheeseburger and chili cheese fries. The cheeseburger came on a toasted, brioche-style bun with lettuce, red onion and cheese. Cooked to a medium done-ness, the meat was juicy, good quality and well seasoned. Yanni uses 24 day aged beef and the flavour really came through.

The chilli cheese fries were also a good choice. The fries were thin, crispy and salty, and were covered with a nice tomatoey, flavourful chili. The addition of cheddar created a nice big bowl of oozing, melting awesomeness.

I really liked the #Meateasy and I’ll definitely go back. It has a fun atmosphere, it isn’t too expensive and the food tastes great and has big personality.

I’m also looking forward to seeing the Meatwagon back on the streets in April.

Daddy Donkey’s new Breakfast Burrito certainly sounds good: a flour tortilla is piled high with sausage, egg, rice and beans; spiked with your choice of salsa and guacamole (optional); then rolled up into a gargantuan tinfoil log. But how does it taste? I recently made the journey down to Leather Lane to find out.

It was obvious from the first few bites that there were a lot of positive contrasts going on. The deep, smoky taste of the slow cooked beans was neatly matched by the lighter, fresher coriander-lime rice. Likewise, the burn of the salsa was nicely tempered by a cool garlicky guacamole.

But it was the choice of breakfast ingredients that I found most interesting. I came expecting a spicy sausage like chorizo, and chili-spiked huevos; what I got instead was a proper British banger and scrambled eggs.

This was by no means a bad thing. The salty meatiness of the banger reached above and beyond the other flavours and gave a real heartiness to the burrito. And the eggs reminded me of a good old-fashioned greasy-spoon fry-up!

I really liked these touches. One of the things that interests me most about food (and street food in particular) is how it changes and adapts to its environment. By throwing in a few British cooked breakfast classics, Joel Henderson celebrates his food for what it is: Mexican food by an English bloke down a lane in London.

The result was a hot and hearty burrito that filled me up way beyond lunchtime.

That said, I’d probably draw the line at cornflakes.