Food to Die For

There is, for example, a purely Japanese section at both Paragon and Emporium where you can buy lavender Hokkaido milk and fresh natto and that morning’s tuna from Tokyo—after all, 100,000 Japanese live in Bangkok, and they have their own supermarkets, the Fuji chain, as well as their own products in the Thai markets. There are tea sections stacked with roselle and blue-pea anchan and flowered green teas with jasmine and vanilla, whole Thai meals in little plastic bags, live crabs and homemade tofu, fresh-squeezed coconut milk, guava, passion fruit, and mango for $2, and saba mackerel served on beds of crushed ice to the sound of female voices cooing on the sound system in Japanese, Arabic, English, Thai, French, and Mandarin.

Quote of the Day: Anthony Bourdain on his Passion for Street Food

4/22/2013 04:59:00 AM

Quote of the Day: Anthony Bourdain on his Passion for Street Food

By Malika Dalamal

“I think of it as the antidote to fast food; it’s the clear alternative to the king, the clown and the colonel. It’s faster and chances are it’s healthier than something at a traditional fast food restaurant. I would much rather give my money to a neighbor or an individual than to a gigantic corporation that owns half the world. Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I prefer food made by an identifiable human that’s actually cooking.”

- Chef, author and TV personality Anthony Bourdain talks to the Huffington Post about his love of street food and his new TV Show.

Street Food Philly worth the price

I find myself standing in front of the Street Food Philly food truck again, with the sun shining and my mouth watering for the local dry-aged burger that I just ordered. I am waiting with a friend of mine who is about to experience Street Food Philly for the first time. Good food, good friends and trying new things — the perfect flavorful lunch break from the hustle and bustle of a busy afternoon in Philadelphia.

Located on 33rd St. between Market and Arch, streets Food Philly serves up delicious and mouthwatering dishes, like the dry-aged burger, at affordable prices. The food truck is owned by Michael Sultan and Carolyn Nguyen who offer specialties that change on a weekly basis.

Among the variety of lunch trucks that line 33rd Street between Market and Arch streets is this kitchen on wheels that is certainly worth trying if you have not done so already. Street Food Philly, the truck bearing silver and green, offers many items, including weekly specials, on its menu.

As a picky eater, I was skeptical at first of the different sauces and changing items on the menu, but Street Food Philly outdid my expectations. The first time I decided to make a stop at Street Food, I thought of getting a burger, nothing too out of the ordinary. I had heard great things about this burger through a friend, and thought I’d give it the old college try. I grabbed a pencil and an order form from the pile that sat on the counter in front of the truck, checked off my burger selection and handed in the form. However, what I received in return was not just any ordinary burger. This dish, topped with garlic herb aioli, tomato compote and Cooper Sharp American cheese, was rich in flavor and worth the $8 price tag. This item, offered every week at Street Food Philly, never fails to satisfy.

Along with the staple foods on the menu, weekly specialties are offered and change depending on which recipe the owners, Michael Sultan and Carolyn Nguyen, decide to make that week. The menu offers variety ranging from soups and sandwiches to tacos and salads. Vegetarian options are also offered on the menu. Still hungry? Try a side of truffle parmesan or sea salt fries. The truck even offers desserts; its salted fudge brownie is one of my personal favorites, and the homemade chocolate chip cookie is a close second. I even tried one of the specials, pig wings, something I never thought of trying but am really glad that I did. The pig wings that week were made in a mole sauce with avocado creme, jicama and carrots. The depth of flavor in the pig wings recipe, along with the other recipes, is to die for.

The recipes are homemade, showcasing whatever the owners feel like cooking that week; even the truck’s ketchup is homemade. The owners are always friendly, too, remembering your name and never failing to strike up a conversation with you while you wait for your food, which is prepared in no time flat, especially considering the detail-oriented items on the menu. The menu’s prices vary from $3 to $10. The weekly specials usually fall on the higher end of the price range, but they are definitely worth the price.

Britain’s Street Food Revolution

William Sitwell, Friday, 19th April 2013

Coq au Vin

William Sitwell hits the road to find out whether street food is the highway to culinary Nirvana or merely a cold, rainswept cul-de-sac without cutlery or tables and chairs

AS SPRING TRIED, and failed miserably, to warm the cockles in early March, I found myself striding up London’s newest street. King’s Boulevard reaches out behind the revamped King’s Cross station and winds its way through large construction sites to its top, where, I’m told, Britain’s most exciting food revolution can be witnessed.
The telling is done by a man called Richard Johnson, a freelance writer and occasional restaurant critic who has decided to throw his weight — and he is rugby-player chunky, thick hands, stubble, brutish almost — behind British street food. So I meet him as he hovers at the top of the street, surrounded by a mere smattering of stalls, the owners of which rub their hands together in an attempt to keep the freezing temperatures at bay.
‘The next Jamie or Heston is now working in a street-food restaurant,’ he declares, welcoming me to this spot. ‘It’s much sexier and for just two or three thousand pounds you can start. Everybody loves a picnic, we can all see the virtue of eating outside, so that’s all that street food is.’
He introduces me around. This lunchtime there are about five pitches, either under a tent, constructed in MDF or attached to a small van.

Illustration by Rich Gemmell

There’s Jon Knight, whose Original Fry-Up Material serves up his quality version of the British breakfast. ‘It’s a tribute to the greasy spoon but without the grease,’ he says. He sells French toast, eggs benedict and rich croque monsieurs and, like the other stall-holders, rents his pitch from Kerb, the organisation that manages street-food stalls across London.
Next to him is Dosa Deli, run by Kristian Price, who, with his wife Amy, sells Asian-inspired street food. ‘We tow this behind the car,’ he says of his stall. ‘The wind took us and ripped us into pieces this morning. Business is OK but it’s pretty awful in the winter. Sometimes I wish I was indoors. But what I love is the people: I get to meet the people who eat my food and get their feedback one-to-one as they eat it. You don’t get that in a restaurant.’
The Prices started their street food business when they were made redundant from a media company. ‘We’re making less money,’ he admits, ‘but we’re living and I wouldn’t swap it.’
Next to moan about the weather is Giacomo Bia, whose Gurmetti stall sells Italian sandwiches; focaccia shipped from his family in Italy and filled with the likes of parma ham. ‘The weather is the biggest challenge,’ he says from his bespoke Italian van, ‘but we are building a respectable business.’
As, one hopes, is Emilie Holmes, who quit a job in advertising so she could sell the likes of a cup of rare oolong from her beautiful Good Proper Tea van. Emilie, who raised funds for the business on the website Kickstarter, drives her 1974 Citroën H to the top of King’s Boulevard every day except Monday and you can tweet your order at her as you step off your train.
‘I started the business in December,’ she says, brewing a cup of Japanese Sencha using filtered water, ‘and buy my teas direct from farmers around the world.’ At least she can take shelter in her van and hover by the grill she uses to heat crumpets on days like this when temperatures are freezing.
Speaking of which, with frostbite attacking my fingers and as I’m unable to take more notes without losing at least one, Johnson suggests we head indoors to talk further.

OVER A PINT at the Parcel Yard pub and some truly revolting deep-fried calamari — we should have dined on the street — Johnson explains how he set up British Street Food to encourage the public to give it a go and to give those judged to be the best annual awards.
‘Street food gives people who want to open restaurants but don’t have the capital the opportunity to do it,’ he says. ‘You can make a lot of money and you can make huge losses. People who do it are gamblers. You never know what the weather will be like and, with the best will in the world, if it rains you won’t have any customers. But when it works, if you’re someone with a passion for ingredients, if you can do a single thing really well — be it rice or tea — then you can be very successful.’
Johnson believes that the most interesting food trends are emerging from street food. ‘People are looking to it to see the restaurants of tomorrow. And we’re now being approached by railway stations, airports and shopping malls who all want a dose of street food. OK, so that might take street food indoors — something that is frowned on by the purists — but at my age I reckon it’s nice to be in the warm and dry.’

Johnson is also advising food chain Leon as it is consulted by the government on school meals. ‘I think we can help stop kids jumping over the fence to McDonald’s,’ he says. ‘Street food has a swagger, it makes good food cool.’
Johnson’s interest in street food began when he was working as a restaurant critic for The Independent. ‘My meals were often coming to £100 a head and I thought that it was such a ridiculously rarefied life that just didn’t fit with me and my beliefs as a democrat,’ he says earnestly. ‘Food should be fun and affordable. I love restaurants but I also like variety. But now there has been a change in the way we eat. And I think that Cameron’s Big Society is made flesh with street food.
‘The Olympics and the Jubilee have meant we commune much more than we used to. People chat in queues when they are buying street food. And I think now there are a lot of cases where street food is actually better than restaurant food.’
If the sun ever comes out I might give it a go. As long as there’s a nice table to sit at…

Read more from Food Friday

Read more from William Sitwell

The British Street Food app, giving locations of the nearest street food to you and reviews, is out in June

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Anthony Bourdain Talks World Street Food Congress, ‘Parts Unknown’

Love him or hate him, Anthony Bourdain is the baddest food (and travel) dude on the block. After wrapping up the ninth season of “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel, Bourdain migrated to CNN where he now hosts “Parts Unknown,” which will “examine cultures from around the world through their food and dining and travel rituals.” In the premiere episode, Bourdain headed to Myanmar where he sought to uncover what, exactly, Burmese food is, and how food culture evolved through the country’s conflict.

It’s no secret that, especially when traveling through Asia, Bourdain is an outspoken advocate for the virtues of chowing down on street food. So, it comes as no surprise that in addition to the new show, he’s pulling double duty as an ambassador for and speaker at the inaugural World Street Food Congress beginning May 31. We caught up with Bourdain to learn all about this new venture, as well as get the scoop on what to expect this season on “Parts Unknown.”

HuffPost Travel: What is the World Street Food Congress?
Anthony Bourdain: It’s a celebration, symposium, conference, demonstration and venue for street food from all over the world. It’s being held, signifigantly, among the culture that has been the most progressive towards, and most accepting of, street food. Singapore is a country that is very unusual in the sense that rich or poor, whatever your income level, you have powerful attachment to and feelings about street food. They’ve been very forward thinking about making sure that street food remains an important part of the culture, but they’ve been very smart about promoting it as well. What I think this event is hoping to do is to have the kind of conversation they had in Singapore, when they moved street vendors into hawker centers, on a global scale.

HPT: What exactly is your involvement?
AB: Well, first of all, any excuse to go to Singapore and stuff my face full of hawker food is always a happy one. I think that for quite some time I’ve had a good relationship with Singapore. I’ve been a very vocal supporter and advocate for the place that street food has in their culture and the way they’ve managed to accommodate concerns. For me it’s a cause.

HPT: Why don’t you think we have a vibrant street food culture in the U.S.?
AB: There’s a huge hunger for it, there’s no doubt about that. I think some communities have embraced it and celebrated their more forward-thinking innovators. San Francisco has been cool, they’ve seen it as an instrument of social change by empowering immigrant communities. Portland, Oregon has embraced it, Austin, Texas, has a really interesting street food culture. Some places like New York have really resisted. They’ve fought it tooth and nail and see it as a threat to brick and mortar restaurants. It’s also a generational thing in a way. They don’t want hipsters lined up outside their doors. It’s the “get off my lawn” factor.

HPT: Would something like a hawker center work in U.S. cities?
AB: I think it would be an answered prayer for New York and many other communities. People who would have never been in the business introduced themselves to the world because they were able to do it with food trucks. What’s wonderful about food trucks is that they’re democratic and they allow creative people to [emerge] and get their product out there when they never would have been able to do that in a brick and mortar situation.

HPT: Why are you so passionate about street food?
AB: I think of it as the antidote to fast food; it’s the clear alternative to the king, the clown and the colonel. It’s faster and chances are it’s healthier than something at a traditional fast food restaurant. I would much rather give my money to a neighbor or an individual than to a gigantic corporation that owns half the world. Maybe it’s naïve of me, but I prefer food made by an identifiable human that’s actually cooking.

HPT: What’s your favorite kind of street food?
AB: Give me some spicy noodles… I love a good mutant hot dog… street tacos make me very very happy. I’m very open. It depends on where I am, but I want it.

HPT: What makes a good street food stall?
AB: If you’re standing in a rural village in Puebla, Mexico and there’s a whole line of locals waiting to get a particular taco, and not so many at the stand down the street, that’s a pretty good indicator.

HPT: What can we expect from your new show, “Parts Unknown”?
AB: I’m going to continue to do what I’ve been doing, which is basically traveling around the world doing stand alone essays on food and culture and drinking, and just doing it on a bigger and slightly more challenging scale. I’m going to a lot of places that I wouldn’t have been able to go with another network. We’re doing shows on more niche, interesting and provocative subject settings that I think other networks were uncomfortable with.

HPT: How have you and your storytelling evolved from “A Cook’s Tour” to “Parts Unknown”?
AB: I’ve been working with camera people, cinematographers and editors, so I’m much more aware of the collaborative process of making and producing television. Over time I’ve gotten better and more comfortable about working with them. I’m aware of what [the video] might look like in editing as we’re shooting it, so I guess I’m better at the technical aspects of putting together a story on video.

HPT: What are your favorite episodes?
AB: I just saw the rough cut from the Libya show. I’m really, really excited about that. It was incredibly difficult to do, and when you work really hard in a difficult situation, it’s satisfying to see that it’s turning out great. It’s far exceeded my wildest hopes. Right now I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.

Earlier on HuffPost: