London Street Food: Markets

It’s been a long time coming, but eventually, after a long summer of toasties, we found an excuse to get down to London and try the local nosh, to see how well Birmingham is getting on in comparison. We ended up having to go on a Monday and Tuesday, as that appears to be our weekend nowadays. On the plus side banks are open and there are no kids around, but outside London there is not a lot of street food going on.

Luckily I got invited to a book launch in London, to celebrate Afterliff, sequel to The Meaning of Liff by Douglas Adams and John Lloyd. Reason for this was the inclusion of a Liff of mine, which long-suffering readers might remember from way back here. They chose to amend the name, much to my dissatisfaction, but ultimately a free bar and a chance to see London are not to be sniffed at, so we packed an overnight bag and caught the first reasonably late-morning train into the capital.

Our goal was to see some proper London street food markets on the Monday, and then hit Kerb – arguably the most famous street food outlet in the country, on the Tuesday. We pulled out the British Street Food App and found somewhere within walking distance of Marylebone, and away we walked into the rain.

Having never walked London I had no idea how small the centre actually is. It turns out that with two smart phones and no prior knowledge of anything above ground you can still stumble across some excellent street food. Even on a monday.

Whilst trying to find Pitt Cue Co – some of the pioneers who turned their humble road-based offerings into an actual restaurant – we accidentally found Berwick Street Market, and amongst the very reasonable offers for courgettes (four for a pound) we found the Moroccan Box. There were a few other traders offering Thai, Mexican and falafel, but Moroccan is a new one on me, so we got ourselves a box of something chicken-y and had all the optional extras.

I would make a pretty cruddy food writer if I did this all the time, but I confess, I did not notice what exactly it was, mainly because hungry. Here is a picture:

Oh my goodness it was tasty. Beautifully spiced, on tasty fresh (possibly pita) bread and with loads of delicious sauces. We were off to a good start, if everything in London was this good then we were in for a treat. We considered lingering at the market to try something else, but after a thoughtful custard tart (I didn’t even get a picture of that, again a great reason why I’m not a food writer) we decided to continue onwards and see another part of London.

We wondered on, delighted that the rain had stopped and confident that there would be markets around every turn from here on in.

Turns out, there were. We drifted out of Soho, into Picadilly, and there was another market, right outside St James’ church. This one was part of Shepherds Markets, a regular set of markets focusing on international food, and held all over the centre of London on different days of the week.

We again had the choice of falafel, mexican and moroccan, but this time we ate from Panka Peruvian, just to be different. Here’s a picture:

The amazing Moroccan was a tough act to follow, and although each of the components were well cooked the food didn’t quite live up to our first course. There was nothing about it that would allow me to pick out Peruvian flavours in future, but it tasted good, and filled us up for an afternoon of trying to get to the hotel before the precious phone battery ran out.

It’s late already, so I’ll reassure you that we did eventually find our hotel, rather than wondering the city aimlessly all night. Tune in next week to see if we make it to Kerb and to find out what actually happens at a book launch!