Starting Up with Richard Johnson @ British Street Food

It was Marco Pierre White who first gave me the idea. It was a summer lunchtime in a New York park and we were hungover from a night of Sambuca at Jay-Z’s party. Really.

Sitting on the grass, and eating a street vendor’s burger slathered with ketchup, we wondered why we couldn’t offer the same thing in Britain. I decided, then and there, that I would do something about our street food. Once I had ordered another burger.

In my time as a food writer and broadcaster I’ve travelled the world. And some of the best food I’ve ever eaten has been on the streets – whether it’s the dusty lanes of Bethlehem, with its hole-in-the-wall falafel shacks serving up pittas fat with hummus, pickle and broad beans, or the highways of Mandalay, with bowls of fishy noodles still salty from the sea. Coming back home to Britain was always a disappointment.

Ten years ago, when I was restaurant critic at The Independent, our food was becoming less of a joke. We had more Michelin-starred restaurants than Italy.

But our street food? An embarrassment. It was either a bag of chips or a cheap sausage on a rusty metal handcart pushed along by a Polish man with three fingers.

We needed a revolution. And, like any good revolution, it started on the street.

In 2009 I signed up Tony, who runs Stoats Porridge Bars. He sold cranachan porridge, with raspberries, honey and cream, from a shiny silver stall on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh.

And Roland, who sold the quality Mexican food of Flaming Cactus from a classic American Airstream trailer. And Sylvia, whose Root Master vegan delights were served aboard a double decker London bus. Pretty soon we had the beginnings of a movement.

It’s now the most important trend in British food for years. It’s young, it’s cool, and – served out of customised vans, trucks and trailers – it’s exciting.

We set up the British Street Food Awards to champion the best of the 10,000 young chefs now cooking on the streets of Britain and beyond – the new generation, who didn’t want to work under some angry French chef for 10 years before they got to cook their own food. And now it’s gone crazy.

Street food collectives are well established in London, Bristol, Glasgow, Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Oxford. At the 2015 British Street Food Awards, the best traders in Britain and beyond will be joined by live music from Universal Music, street food crazy golf, live reviews of the food pages from some of the best journalists in the country and the world’s first aroma DJ, all at the British Street Food Festival.

We’ll be setting up shop in some of the country’s most perfect ‘found’ places – whether it’s under a circus tent in Cardiff, by a barge of fireworks on the docks in Leeds or at a mystery location on the Cornish coast, they will all be spectacular parties, with food and live music at their heart. But we start off in Oxford because it’s a young city with an amazing spirit, and the sort of architecture that can still a beating heart. Plus you love food!

You’ll be able to buy sharing plates from each of them, and then vote for your favourites on the British Street Food app.

Winners of the vote – plus a few wild cards – will then go through to compete for a life-changing prize at the finals in London in September. Come on down!

TRY IT
Central and East heat: Oxford – May 1-4
The final: London –  September 25-27
Tickets at britishstreetfood.co.uk