London Street Food?
 

I love gourmet street food; the really good stuff. Many cities in the US have meeting places for vendors and that creates a culinary gathering place of very unique and excellent tastes. What can I expect and should I look for in London?

There is a guy at Borough Market selling the best grilled cheese sandwich in the world.

Didn't someone post that he had to close and find a new market?

Borough Market is a good venue anyway- near London Bridge station.

Defintely Borough Market (Thurs - Sat afternoons) or Greenwich Market (on the weekends).

Sadly Leicester Sq also has street food (well lots of places around London do...) but it is mainly kebabs and fried chicken take-aways.

Leaving Borough Market and a Christmastime roasted chestnut stall in Regent Street aside, street food is not really a feature of English life. Eating in the street is not quite polite.

"Eating in the street is not quite polite."

Well, that (or at least that anyone cares if it isn't) would be news to hundreds of thousands of Londoners.

Any glance at a London crowd will reveal lots of them eating. But it's almost always something - sweet or savoury -bought from a shop. Street food was Health & Safetyed out of existence in the late ninteenth century, when practically every account of London life included an enormous range of seafood and pie sellers.

Apart from Tubby Isaac's seafood stall near Aldgate East tube, you've now only got very, very dodgy hotdog stalls in the centre. But, whatever tarquin thinks, it's perfectly acceptable (indeed at my station around 6 pm, almost mandatory) to grab hot food from a takeaway and eat it on the run: there's a growing number of noodle shops catering for this, and any number of Cornish pasty kiosks, sandwich bars every three inches, sushi-style takeaways every three yards and nice savoury nibbles in most South Asian sweet shops (Drummond St, near Euston station's good for them). Even the bposherst fish & chip places sell a significant proportion of their stock to people eating while walking.

Camden Lock market at weekends actually offers sort of what you're asking for, with lots of unusual (for us) ethnic stalls. Mostly exceptionally mediocre, IMHO, and not remotely upto SE Asian standards.

>>But, whatever tarquin thinks, it's perfectly acceptable (indeed at my station around 6 pm, almost mandatory) to grab hot food from a takeaway and eat it on the run<<

Not to those of us what was brung up proper.

Other than Borough market , I don't think of London and street food in te same sentence, If you go to Borough Market try the hand dived scallops from the vendor on one of the outer aisles. Excellent , we get them every time. ALso like the venison and lamb burgers sold in various stalls

Oh and on either Sundays or Saturdays there is a market in the Duke of York square with lots of vendors selling many things,some ethnic some English all good!

I refer people to Cut-me-own-throat Dibbler & his sausage inna bun to give an idea what UK street food is like

http://wiki.lspace.org/wiki/Cut-Me-Own-Throat_Dibbler

Looks like Kappacasein is selling grilled cheese in their new stall in Bermondsey.

We are leaving for London on Friday and were hoping to try those grilled cheese sandwiches at the Borough Markets. Is Bermondsey a market as well? Can anyone give me any details as to opening times etc?
Many thanks.

Kappacasein grilled cheese: Please come and see us at the reopening of the stall in Bermondsey on Saturday 14th of May 2011 from 9am to 2pm, at what will also be our new cheese making premises:
1Voyager Business Estate (at the junction of Frean Street and Ness Street)
London SE16 4RP

Great, thanks so much. I will put that on my map.

Stick with Borough Market . For god's sake don't go near any of those minging pizza slice stalls you see in the West End. Probably avoid the chestnuts too.

I vaguely recall some kind of group bollocking in a school assembly because pupils had been seen 'eating in school uniform' on the street . And a few years ago they did have posters on the tube asking you not to eat in front of other passengers ( 'the smell of a snack makes some people crack!). But the number of people clutching Pret bags and MacDonalds suggests that sentiment is very much on the way out....

I disagree on the chestnuts (winter only). Those warm chestnuts on cold winter days as I'd walk from work to the tube -- let's just say I lived for those!

Not necessarily "street food" but definitely food you can eat on thre street (or in their small restaurant) are the cornish pasties at the West Cornwall Pasty shop in Covent Garden. Delicious, fresh! Nothing more fun (or tasty!) than grabbing one of those, and walking around Covent Garden snacking and watching the side shows.

I have been to LOndon at least 5 times and I must admit I don't have any recollection of street food. And coming from NYC - where we have many hundreds of street vendors it was kind of a surprise. (We have multiple breakfast places, hot dog carts, stand with food in a host of different ethnicities as well as all the ice/ice cream stands and fresh juice bars.

In Vienna there are innumerable stands selling a variety of wursts, as well as some with pretzels. In Belgium there are frites stands everywhere and in Scandinavia I've seen a bunch of herring stands. But London - nothing.

I have seen in photos fried whole (small) fish and chips. What are those called? I would love that.

>>But London - nothing.<<

A combination of the last remaining traces of social convention with fairly strict enforcement of traffic regulation controls on street trading generally and health-and-safety controls on food preparation. Basically, only at regular pitches at markets* or other fixed locations like stations, or fly-by-night appearances at events drawing large crowds, like football matches, where the police will be busy doing other things (so the classic dodgy kebab or mystery sausages).

*One not mentioned so far would be Broadway Market in Hackney on a Saturday afternoon, but it's a bit out of the way for most visitors.

If you come to Cambridge you will find a really good baked potato stand on the Market Square and hotdog and crepe stands close by as well so all is not lost on that score.

I wouldn't call it street food persay, but there was a farmer's market in the Brunswick Shopping Centre, Bloomsbury, which had a crepe stand. The man made the most delicious crepes(savory and sweet. Don't know if he's still around.

My son's independent school forbids eating on the street in uniform. It also forbids talking to adults with your hands in your pockets and a whole list of other things that I had no idea were bad manners! I thought if I could choose the right fork and keep my elbows off the table I was in good shape.

The sausage stand in Cambridge is quite posh - the bloke serving has a stripey apron and a boater. If they are the local sausages (Newmarket sausages) they'll be lush.

Agree on the jacket potatoes - they're always good. Crepes are a bit foreign and unecessary though.

A friend in UK was appalled less than ten yrs ago when i wanted to get a "coffee to go" (aka "takeaway") and drink it while walking down the street. It just wasnt done!!!

Flanneruk took the words out of my mouth. Whatever you do, don't have the hotdogs --or hamburgers-- you might find sold by street vendors in Piccadilly area. My first sight of London street food was a vat of "burgers" floating in oil!! Amazingly enough, my Englishman friends scarfed 'em down with no ill effects.
The food in England has come a LONG way since then, but tttman, I doubt you will find much in London other than what's recommended above. (Surfergirl, i love those pasties, and the other goodies at Covent Garden, too!)

I absolutely love strolling with coffee in the early am..

Hey RM67 I forgot about the sausage stand. The evening crowd is well catered for to, with the Van of Life at one end of the Market Square and Uncle Franks kebab van at the other.

How about those Cornish pasties sold all about from faux wagons? Seems every old biddie in Cornwall must be up late baking those little delicacies out!