Are Street Food traders transforming the way we eat on the streets?

The Street Food Phenomena – As much as I love a night at the football, it generally always leads to a real food disaster; not because there’s a lack of choice, far from it, the streets are littered with catering van after catering van – selling mainly what my brother refers to as ‘Rat Burgers’.

I can only imagine the ‘Rat Burger’ term refers to the lack of quality generally found at football stadia and gives an explanation as to why, for me, it leads to a food disaster on a regular basis. There does however seem to be a glimpse of hope for the future with the emergence of the Street Food scene which now appears to be heading to the north of England.

Mobile KitchenAlready established on the streets of London and more specifically the Borough Market area of our capital city, the street food traders are transforming the way we eat on the streets. Serving up culinary delights such as spiced lamb baguettes with salsa Verde, Mixed Game Burger with Harissa and freshly made Sourdough pizza’s to name but a few. Indeed, it was this experience of borough market food that fuelled my desire to find great street food in the north; thankfully I didn’t need to look far.

Quirky fish & chips, clay oven baked pizza’s, gourmet burgers and even trendy hotdogs can be found if you look carefully, but by far my favourite, based purely on the array of flavours is Margo and Rita and their amazing Mexican Burritos. Margo trudges the M62 corridor in his trusty purple French H Van Rita, dishing up authentic South American Cuisine.

Margo and Rita claim that to make the best Burritos everything has to be fresh that day, and by working closely with their trusted local suppliers they make sure this happens every time! I wonder if the football street traders could make the same claim?

Purple Street Food Traders VanWe caught up with Margo and Rita at the ‘Amazing Graze’ event in Leeds; the sun was shining, the atmosphere was buzzing and the venue was stacked with artistic creations that kept us entertained for hours. It was befitting really that when we needed to eat, the variance in food matched the variance in the stalls that we’d perused that day.

Although I’m sure this isn’t the end of the ‘Rat Burger’, it’s hopefully the start of things to come and I’m sure that as the consumer stumbles upon the delights of street food, they’ll begin to demand more from street traders and the quality on offer will improve with it.

To find details on where you can bump into Margo and Rita as well as other amazing street traders in the North of England check out Gorilla Eats and Northern StrEats who detail some amazing events suitable for any ‘foodie’!