Partick Farmers Market

Today was my first full day back in Glasgow, and although I had planned a full gastro-tour of my old chomping ground, a late night and way too much Guinness ruined my plans for an early rise (not to mention my appetite.)



One place I did manage, however, was the Partick farmers' market. The market has been running on the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month for a quite a few years now, and was a common feature of my fortnightly schedule back when I lived here.

It's typical FM stuff: Pates, cheeses, hunks of organically raised meat etc. Way to many things to spend my money on - at prices that make my overdraft wince. It's also one of the very few places you can get anything resembling street food in the city.

After a quick scout, I grabbed one of these Aberdeen Angus burgers from a stall on the market's fringes. The burger had been pre-cooked on a hotplate, and came simply in a roll with cheese.

The patty was pure quality - a hockey-puck sized slab of meat, well reared and well seasoned, with just a suggestion of pink at it's beefy heart. This combined with a tasty wedge of cheddar that equalled the meat and almost made it more of a beef and cheese sandwich than a burger. The roll for its part was largely non-descript, but did a good job of holding the thing together (don't you just hate it when it falls apart in your hands?)

The result was a decent, all-round burger made with quality ingredients. Enjoyable, reasonably priced (£3) and worth braving the cold. It also gave me an excuse to throw up some FM signs

Please ignore once more

Again sorry about this! I'm in the midst of trying to switch from blogger to wordpress and having a few teething problems. NORMAL SERVICE SHOULD BE RESUMED SHORTLY.

Best Street Food 2009

With my Asia trip fresh in my mind and the year coming to a close, I thought it would be a good time to recommend some of my favourite street food and street food locations of the past year. The list is of course subjective, and I am positive there is alot I missed, so please feel free to chip in with any suggestions of your own!

Best Breakfast - Lijiang Baba

Breakfast vendors often provide some of the best, and most elusive, street food around. Many of these stalls start early and are finished by the time most tourists even consider waking up. We stumbled on Lijiang Baba whilst on an early morning, crowd-beating stroll around the beautiful (but over-touristed) Chinese city of Lijiang. I had to be dragged out of bed that morning, but the combination of fluffy freshly cooked flat bread, egg and the tarty hotness of the chili sauce proved the perfect wake-up call. If you visit, beat the crowds and the bland and overpriced cafe fare for one of the best breakfasts around!

Best Beverege - Ca Phe Sua Da

Not something I always consider street food, but Vietnam's Ca Phe Sua Da is one drink that simply can't be missed. Served hot or with ice, this thick Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk is strong, sweet and a great example of the country's appropriation of some its former colonial masters' culinary heritage. Indeed, Ho Chi Minh once worked as a pastry chef under Le Coursier himself!

Best Street Food City - Penang, Malaysia.

Delving into Penang's street food feels like being a steel ball inside a pinball table. Make sure to bring an appetite as the city bounces you between cultures and vendors with little thought for the constraints of appropriateness or digestion. Three dishes in particular (Char Keow Tay, Hoikkien Mee, and Laksa Assam) should not be missed, but as with anywhere, most of the fun is in pointing, tasting and discovering for yourself. You might want to steer clear of the Oysters though!

Best Overall Country - China

It's a toughie, but for sheer quality and variety I'm going to have to go with China. From grilled lamb kebabs dusted with cumin to intricately flavoured noodles, China's expansive size and myriad of cultures makes for one hell of a street buffet! Places of note include Xi'an (home of the terracotta warriors and a lively Muslim quarter) and Yunnan, in the country's Southwest. Ignore the scorpions on sticks and spend your money on some real food instead. You won't regret it.

Best Rice Dish - Com Ga

So ubiqitous are rice and noodles in Asia that I decided to give them a categories of their own. On the rice side of things, Vietnam's Com Ga takes the first prize. Rice is cooked in turmeric, chicken stock and coconut milk until fluffy and flavoursome, then mixed with a killer combination of coriander, shredded chicken and chili. Hands down one of the best street dishes ever and one I intend on recreating as soon as I get access to time and a kitchen.

Best Noodle Dish - Yunnan Noodles

I never did find out the name for this popular Yunnan cold noodle dish but after a while I didn't much care. Many versions exist, but most include raw onions, crushed peanuts and up to a dozen sauces, oils and pastes. Spicy, filling and refreshing at the same time, I've yet to come across anything similar anywhere else. I'm still amazed at how intricately these ladies were able to balance and cajole some combustable flavours into something approaching perfection. A must eat if ever there was one!

Best Market - Chiang Mai Sunday Night Market

Every Sunday night Chiang Mai's main street shuts to traffic and turns into a celebration of shopping and eating. This market is notable not only for Thai classics but also for the refreshingly international vibe of many of the stalls. In addition to the usual curries and noodles, novelties such as sushi and pie 'n' mash were also on the menu. A great place for a wandering graze, and something that any trip to Chiang Mai should be planned around. The nightly market outside the old town pales woefully in comparison and isn't worth the sole rubber.

Best Korean Street Food

One final mention should go to my past and future home, Korea. I spent 12 months in the Hermit Kingdom and my intial experiences there sparked the idea for this blog. In my opinion, Korea's best street food is Pajeon, a pancake made with flour, chili, spring onion and squid. Pajeon tastes best when eaten huddled around a street cart and dipped in salty soy sauce.

Daddy Donkey Mexican Grill

Yesterday I braved the London cold for my first taste of UK street food in ages. My destination was the Daddy Donkey Mexican Grill in Leather Lane Market, Holborn. The grill comes highly recommended, and I was interested to see how UK fare compared to its Asian counterparts.

Daddy Donkey started off as a wooden stall four years ago, and since then has upgraded to a fully fledged burrito mobile . It's a slick operation, staffed by a friendly and dexterous 4-5 man crew that churn out burritos to a long line of customers at a frightening pace.

Ordering is simple - decide between a burrito, tacos or a salad, then choose a filling and either mild, medium, hot or extra hot salsa. I went for a Daddy D burrito with steak and hot salsa. The steak had been marinated in chipotle adobo and grilled, and the burrito included lime rice, black beans, lettuce, sour cream and cheese.

I've never been to Mexico, but this was up there with the best burritos I've had. The steak was great - charred, flavoursome and substantial, and the fillings worked a charm. I particularly enjoyed the black beans, which were slow cooked to form a wonderful, viscous mass that gave the burrito an extra dimension.

All this made for an excellent lunch and a great intro to British street food. At £5.75 it didn't come cheap, but the quality ingredients and large servings made it just about worth it (this is London after all.)

One thing I noticed about the stall was the heavy branding that was going on. To be honest the logos, slogans and t-shirts took me back a bit, and my single burrito was served in what I considered an unnecessarily expensive looking paper bag( I do realise however that the branding is a central reason for its success and without it I probably never would have been there in the first place.)

A great feed, and an essential stop on any self-respectin', mex-lovin', street food freak's London itinerary

The Last Supper

A few nights ago my Asian Street Food experience came to an end on a Kuala Lumpur back street. We'd taken an overpriced taxi from our hotel to a reputable street food market in the Kampung Baru area of the city, only to find that a public holiday the previous day had curtailed the night market, meaning a rapidly dwindling pool of vendors. Ignoring the satay stalls and cat calls from the adjoining restaurants, I quickly settled on a popular noodle stall and it's smiling Malay vendor for what was to be my parting shot.

This was classic one dish one vendor stuff, cooked on a huge, circular pan and served in hot, heavy paper parcels like fish and chips. The noodles were a wide and flat runway variety, reminiscent of a rogue strain of linguine, and had been mixed in with liberal amounts of beansprouts, chili and soy sauce.



The result was a dish that was more texture than flavour. The chili and soy sauce were good, but it was the juxtaposition of the smooth, soft, slightly sticky flat noodles and the crunchy, fresh beansprouts that piqued my interest. Faced with this mean pair, the flavours sidled off into the background and kept their presence to mere taste bud fodder. I gobbled the lot right there on the sidewalk (sorry, pavement) then went to buy some fake DVDs

I felt that this was a good dish to end on. It was simple stuff - quick, sustaining and unpretentious, and the type of thing that I'd be pushed to find any other place at any other time. I loved the rusticity of the serving methods and the fact that it only cost about 20p.

I'm in London now, and its going to be interesting to see how the street food here compares. Next stop Borough market!

Nasi Goreng: Breakfast of Champions

Years ago, whilst en route to Australia, I had one of the most memorable eating experiences of my life aboard the wonderful Malaysia Air. It was around midnight UK time, but the cabin crew had yanked open the window shutters to the rising sun and announced breakfast.



On the menu was Nasi Goreng, an Indonesian and Malay breakfast staple that generally involves fried rice, egg, chili sauce and occasionally seafood, meat or vegetables. This particular version came with a little portion of curried prawns on the side, and sent my dormant, 18 year old taste buds shooting across continents faster than any jumbo jet.


I've carried that experience with me, and was justifiably excited by the prospect of a re-run when we arrived in Malaysia. However, far from recreating that single experience, I've discovered that Nasi Goreng, a lot like multi-cultural Malaysia, exists in several different shades held together by a few common denominators.


One of those is sambal, a pungent chilli paste with variations that include prawn paste, lime juice and sugar. Sambal can be a bit much at first, but as with many acquired tastes, perseverance brings with it rich rewards.


Other common denominators include fried rice and eggs. The egg sometimes comes hard boiled, at other times it is fried whole mixed through until barely cooked. Further variations exist with fried anchovies, prawns, sliced cucumber or what ever comes to hand. This is because Nasi Goreng is essentially an economical meal, composed of leftover rice and other odds and ends.


Even presentation is up for grabs. Sometimes it comes in little pyramid shaped banana leaf packages that open to reveal a boiled egg balanced on top of a dollop of sambal and portion of rice. Other times it comes out with the different components separated on the plate, awaiting the judicious application of fork and spoon.

A true breakfast of champions.

Chili Crab at Lau Pa Sat

In my last post but one, I described how a certain rancid sea freak had robbed me not only of the contents of my stomach, but also of my taste for Asian food. At the time I was understandably worried - there I was in one of the best food cities in the world and all I could think about was western stodge. After putting up some resistance at first, I followed some sound advice and gave in to my criminal urges. Within a few days, I wolfed down a couple of hamburgers, a hot dog, a KFC zinger burger and a few portions of chips. When I came out the other side, my western fixations were mostly satiated, and I fell straight into the claws of a chili crab.

Chili crab is probably the most famous Singaporean dish. For decades it has had both pincers firmly locked on the city, putting the squeeze on tourists and locals alike with its winning formula of chunky crab meat and rich chili sauce. To even contemplate not having one would have been sacrilege. As such, during my final hours in town I headed down to the wonderful Lau Pa Sat hawker centre in the business district to get myself a great big slice of redemption pie.

My few days on the burger train had set me back a bit, so to make up for lost time I ordered a black pepper crab (another Singaporean institution) and made this a double date. The pair cost a very respectable 32 dollars (about 15 quid) and I even got to inspect the lovelies before they hit the pan. Although not the biggest, these guys were no shrinking violets. Each possessed a couple of mighty, meaty claws and when they finally arrived on my table, dismembered and burning hot on the plate, I knew this was not going to be an easy task.

Like a new jotter in school, it started off neatly enough. I poked and pinched and needled the meat out of the shell like it was precious gold bullion. After a while however, things started to deteriorate. My finger dips into the wash bowl became more infrequent, and (as Sarah had no trouble pointing out) the chili sauce had begun to migrate up my arms and across my face. I was cracking, slurping and biting like a man possessed.

Even making allowances for this notoriously messy dish, I was making an exhibition of myself - and didn't care. Sarah was wearing an expression of permanent disgust and even the guys that sold me the crab seemed a little horrified. But that didn't matter. The crab was as plump and full as a country maiden, yielding plenty of firm white flesh to go with the accompanying sauces. Of these the chili sauce really stood out - thick, gloopy and not so spicy as to overpower the crab's delicate sensibilities.

By the time I was finished all I had left was a pile of shells and a slap happy grin. Roll on final week!