A few weeks ago I visited a trendy food venue in Manchester, I won’t name it. I was there on multiple recommendations as the go-to place for street food in the city. And the food was indeed good, very good in parts, but here’s the rub – it wasn’t street food.
I’m now going to reach into my pocket in search of a sturdy tin opener, because I fear we’re about to enjoy a family-sized can of worms. You see, to my mind street food, in order to qualify as such, needs to satisfy two core criteria: firstly, that it is relatively inexpensive, and secondly that it is served somewhere at least vaguely close to street level. That doesn’t go to say that the food has to be cheap in terms of quality (I refer you to my previous ramble concerning the Singaporean noodle chef with a Michelin star) but surely it needs to be cheaper than eating at a restaurant? I mean, staff costs, crockery and cutlery, glassware, property rents, alcohol and music licensing, all of this must be swallowed into the price of a restaurant dish but a street food vendor? At best it’s ingredients, packaging and the dreaded pitch fee – even tax isn’t a given.* So when I was asked to pay £10 for three (admittedly very good) bitesize fish tacos I found them a little hard to swallow. And then there was the £3.50 flat white, and the £10 steak and onion sandwich (chips an extra £4); all very good indeed, but very modest portions and as expensive as most bricks-and-mortar eateries. Which is what this place was, a converted public building now housing, essentially, pop-up restaurants in a trendy part of town.
Which is absolutely fine. The place was immaculate, the food was good, the hipster-o-meter was reading off the scale. But in much the same way that the word ‘artisan’ has been molested into meaning anything with a semblance of provenance (and ‘provenance’ now means anything with an ingredients list), the term ‘street food’ seems to be undergoing an appropriation of its own to mean a small portion of something served in compostable packaging. The actual street doesn’t come into the equation.
There are some great street food venues out there, that’s for sure. Manchester alone has two or three that come to mind, proper gazebo-and-gas-burner places trading in that rare commodity of volume AND quality combined. Yet even these oases risk dilution at the hands of the opportunists. ‘Street food’ has become a buzzword, a term to signify anything vaguely alternative or anti-. Anti-what?, you ask. Anti-whatever. It’s non-specific and non-committal. It simply doesn’t matter. It’s all about the vibe rather than the message. The trendy reputation enjoyed by all things street food branded has meant the inevitable intervention of the big boys. Restaurants, once set up to serve their own particular type of clientele, are now jumping on the street food bandwagon. Because that restaurant-going type now has Instagram and demands their food in a poplar boat with a side of halloumi and plenty of nutritional yeast. Even the fast-food giants are at it – cue McDonald’s New York Street Food menu and KFC’s Streetwise range. Where once the momentum was in morphing street food into something bigger, better, more gentrified, the trend now is flowing in reverse. Street burgers > McDonald’s > street burgers. There’s even a Netflix series dedicated to it. Street food’s indie kudos is a tradable currency.
So yes, street food is alive and well, and I dare say it’s better than ever. To call its recent rise in form a renaissance would be something of an understatement, but for the purposes of this analogy we’ll stick with it – because if a renaissance is indeed what we’re going to call this (and I’m adhering to the most literal meaning of the word here) then we’re now way beyond the realms of post-war baby boomers birth rates. This is full in-vitro territory, quints, sextuplets, the lot. Walk down the high street and by the time you reach the bottom there’ll be a new street food joint set up at the top. Of course, it won’t actually be serving street food but that doesn’t matter – it’s all piled up in a poplar boat and the halloumi is to die for.
*I have no doubt that the majority of street food vendors are fully honest and open in their annual tax return declarations. Mostly.
EMRE GRUB 