Take to the streets: London's hottest street food trends

From sweet Taiwanese pancakes to crispy miso squid, these are the capital’s best new kerbside spots
Reinventing the wheel: the Wheelcake Island stall at KERB Camden

While London’s streets aren’t paved with gold, they are at least lined with food trucks and stalls worth their weight of it. The question is always: what’s next?

“The great thing about street food is that there is always exciting new talent coming through, all the time, so it never gets stale,” says Joel Porter, PR manager at Camden Market.

“The street food scene in London has been one of the defining features of eating out in the capital over the past few years. From workers exchanging supermarket sandwiches for fresh cooked lunches from their local KERB market to the popularity of Street Feast on a Friday night, it has changed the way we eat out and socialise.”

Street food has become the restaurant industry’s weather vane, giving a sign of where the winds are blowing. Where once chefs in London only came up through restaurants, now real cooks are brought up on the streets. Bao, Breddos Tacos, Smokestak and Lucky Chip were all stalls that proved so popular they’ve set up permanent shop.

Want a taste of things to come? From Exmouth Market to Brockley, here’s where to find the next hot dish before it hits the mainstream and you have to queue round the block for it.

Wheelcake Island

Soft, moist, fluffy Taiwanese pancakes filled with creamy fillings are the mainstay of Wheelcake Island, which has been trading in London for the past seven months. “Bringing a completely new dish to the marketplace is much more difficult than we first imagined,” say co-founders Felix Tse and Yi-Ting Lin, who decided to set up a street food business because Lin’s brother missed his Taiwanese wheel cakes from back home. “But there’s a Chinese proverb we like that says ‘gold glitters no matter where it’s found’.”

With fillings including custard, chocolate, matcha and adzuki bean, and the help of their mascot — a “humble fat frog” — they aim to make this mainstay of Taipei’s night markets a local favourite in London too.

Brick Lane on weekdays, KERB Camden on Wednesdays, wheelcake.co.uk

Salt Shed

Our favourite salt baes, schoolfriends Francis Sweeney and Laurence Stevens both aged 23, have been curing salt beef “to impress friends” for more than a decade. For them, it’s all about theatre: using brisket and finer beef cuts such as short rib and an aggressive Argentinian-style flame grill creates a “seamless tender crunch”.

The key, though, is tradition. “Foods that once thrived in the city, such as salt beef, have declined, and being proud Londoners our mission is to recreate and develop this beautiful East End flavour.” It’s not all talk: the 10-day-cured salt beef short rib steak, flame-grilled in honey mustard glaze, topped with chilli-churri, is so mouth-watering you’ll need a bigger bib.

KERB markets Weds, Thurs, and Fri; Greenwich Market on weekends, salt-shed.co.uk

Spicebox

Grace Regan, the founder of Spicebox — and great-great-grandaughter of Thor Bjørklund, inventor of the cheese knife — is a plant-based powerhouse. When an 18-month-old vegan street food stall raises £450,000 in funding, it’s time to sit up and take notice. Her dishes are rooted in “traditional, veg-centric Indian cooking methods”, such as tandoori cauliflower steak with makhani sauce on grilled naan.

Regan, a one-time Silicon Valley tech prodigy, has surfed the vegan boom. Her big lesson? “Stay true to your values,” she says. “As the vegan food scene in London has exploded, so has the hype around vegan junk food. It would be easy for us to cater to this and stick a cauliflower in a deep-fat fryer but we’ve decided to play the long game and not deviate from our core values.

Every day at KERB Camden, gimmespicebox.com

Only Jerkin’’

“You only get back what you put in in the world of street food,” says Luke Dawes, a 32-year-old former psychiatric nurse who now runs Only Jerkin’ with his partner Jessica Olsen. “The hours are long and the days are tiring but the customer satisfaction makes it all worthwhile.” Indulgent Caribbean street food with a twist is their forte, packed with flavour and punch. Their secret weapon? “That has to be our fried jerk chicken nuggets, triple-dipped in ginger-beer batter, because these guys are what originally got us noticed.”

Street Food Union in Soho, Weds-Fri 11am-3pm; KERB Camden market seven days a week, 11am-7pm; KERB lunchtime markets: Weds at West India Quay, Thurs at Granary Square, Fri at London Bridge, on Twitter @onlyJerkin’

Babek Brothers

Boasting “the best kebabs this side of Istanbul” the Babek Brothers’ goal is to “change the kebab from a greasy late-night thing to a dinner out”. Having “eaten our body weight” in charcoal-cooked meat and fresh bread, tandoori chicken and naan in India or a lamb kofte and khobez in Turkey, Elliot and Sam Day have been making waves in the London food scene.

While they use only English, grass-fed beef and lamb and free-range chicken, their mission statement is global. Their bestseller is a Kim Koftashian: big and juicy, it was the first kebab they made, with lamb, beef, heaps of garlic yoghurt and pink pickled onions.

Hawker House in Canada Water until Nov 18, then at Winterville on Clapham Common Thursday to Sundays from November 23, babekbrothers.com

Ink

“No one was doing crispy squid on the street food circuit,” says Lucy Mee, who has been running her stall since June last year with boyfriend Josh Paterson. “Having always ordered it on every menu we decided to give it a go.” The hot favourite? Crispy squid tossed with coriander and chillies, with three mayos (black garlic, miso and chilli) and a sesame and soy dressing. They’ve just started serving crispy squid tacos too.

Street Feast Hawker House every Friday and Saturday and KERB Camden seven days a week, on Twitter @inksquidbar

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