Top eats in Kreuzberg and Neukoelln, Berlin

When I lived in Berlin from 2005 to 2006, it was not the place for exciting, high quality food. Eating out was cheap and cheerful - there were heaps of generic "national cuisine" restaurants which did watered down versions of curry or noodles, and it kept us happy as Erasmus students. You could probably say similar of London back then. The fetishisation of food has benefited both cities, and it's always a pleasure to go back to Berlin and see how the food scene is developing.

Like London, the last decade has seen the city's gravity shift. In Berlin it's all slunk south-east from Mitte and Prenzlauer Berg to Kreuzberg and Neukölln, which have that potent mix that leads to hipster-led regeneration: a history of protest and radicalism and melting-pot feel from being the home to decades of waves of migration.

I was lucky enough to stay with my amazing multi-talented friend Elizabeth Rushe, who has worked for many years in food, design, travel, start ups and music in Berlin, and is an excellent source of knowledge for what's new, old and interesting in the city. Follow her on twitter, instagram or just admire her photos.

For older tips (google them to see if they're still open), check out my blogs on Prenzlauer Berg, Kreuzberg in 2012, and a five year old general round up.

Stella
Stella is New Yorker Suzy Fracassa's cafe and take-out on Neukölln's Wesestrasse, which is like a much more sleepy, low key version of Kingsland Road, or a suped up version of Lower Clapton Road. Suzy's been doing gorgeous catering of fusion-y salads, meals and sweet delights for many years, earning a big enough cult following to open up this permanent space. There's a daily selection of cold dishes a single hot dish, decent coffee, cakes and cold drinks.

Suzy's Italian background, time in New York and admiration of Ottolenghi's dab hand at Asian and middle Eastern fusion influence the cooking. There's a pretty price guide setting out the cost of all the combinations of portions of cold and hot dishes and different sizes.

I go for three cold salads, but have a nibble on a friend's meatballs in tomato sauce - sublime. I try the sesame noodles - a homage to a late-night New York Asian fast food staple, made with Italian spaghetti, expertly seasoned with a sesame dressing, spring onions and toasted sesame black and white sesame seeds. There's a broccoli slaw, which has a lightly creamy dressing and lots of toasted bits, a wild rice salad with sweet potato and asparagus (Germany goes WILD for Spargelsaisson!). I also try a friend's wild garlic pesto potato salad. Everything is delicious, with carefully balanced flavours that sing in your mouth for ages afterwards.





We finish sharing some rich and gooey chocolate brownies and marshmallow Rice Krispie cakes. There are tables on the pavement outside, and a lovely back room with a big table, views of an overgrown garden, and a beautiful mural of verdant plants along one wall.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

Suzy knows how to feed the soul and put a smile on her customers. Watch this space to see how Stella develops.

Street food nights at Markthalle Neun, Kreuzberg
Markthalle Neun is a stunning old covered market building in an understated Kiez in Kreuzberg. Through the week it's a mixture of farmers selling vegetables and other produce with a good few specialist mini delicatessens selling booze, olive oils, salamis, cheese, smoked fish and much more. But every Thursday night lots of street food stalls and bars open up inside, and people flock from all over Berlin to savour the food, drink and atmosphere.

There is so much to choose from, but we try Korean hot dogs (available vegan too), loaded with kimchi, sriracha, cheese and crispy onions.



I love the bar siu steamed buns, made by a Chinese lad and his mum. The pork mince filling is nicely pungent, full of flavour. The rice dough is light and pillowy and literally steaming from the steaming.



Bao Kitchen's open steamed bun (Momofuku-style, so now) with pork is more pulled than those perfectly cooked, glazed pork belly slabs done by the pros, but it stills tastes good.



And I'm blown away by the smoked veal ribs from Big Stuff Smoked stall - one of the most popular, demonstrated by all the beef brisket and short rib gone by 7pm when I develop enough appetite to order. You can choose from a number of specially made sauces - I get their barbecue cherry cola sauce, which is every bit as sweet, sour, smoky and delicious as it sounds.



By 8pm it is heaving. So many people. There are a decent number of tables, so it's all quite grown up, and the queues are rarely too long. It's nice that the demographic is much more mixed than it would be in London - lots of families, older groups, not just brash 20/30 somethings. Some of the stalls change each week, and there's a huge selection, so lots of reasons to keep going back. Most of the prices are sub 7€, comparing favourably with the likes of London's Street Feast.

Thai Park in Preusselpark
Sundays are a big deal in Berlin. All the shops are closed, and you've probably had a late boozy night, so it's all about being outside (when the weather's good) and nourishing yourself with good food and a good mosey. Flea Markets are a big part of the Sunday experience, with Mauer Park in Prenzlauer Berg being the biggest and most famous. Boxhagener Platz in Friedrichshain is also nice, and Ankona Platz in Prenzlauer Berg has much more high quality bric a brac than a lot of the junk at Mauer Park.

Quietly gaining in popularity is the Thai Market in Preussel Park, deep in West Berlin. Berlin is home to a big Thai population, but many of the restaurants serve a duller version of the cuisine. Not so here, where you'll find about 50 stalls run by Thai (mostly) women, who're all sat on mats on the grass, with a few implements (cool boxes, gas powered grills) to make usually a single dish. The flavours are totally unedited - pungent cuts of meat, copious quantities of fish sauce, chillies with a proper kick.



A foodie friend guides us to a longish queue for green papaya salad. This is one of my benchmark dishes, and it blew every other version I'd had out the water. Each portion is made from scratch and to order. The papaya is shredded with a mandolin, tipped into a huge pestle where it meets its mortar, along with lime, chilli, fish sauce, dried shrimps, roasted peanuts and a few tomatoes, and is then pummelled and tasted and adjusted and pummelled and tasted and adjusted, until she's happy with it. Oh boy - this was so hot, ask for her to hold the chilli if you've not got a pretty hefty tolerance for spice. But it was so good, and a steal for a huge portion at 5€.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

I also try some squid skewers, which are a steal at 2€ each, loaded with tentacles, griddled on high and lathered in a chilli sauce. I grab the last three pork and peanut skewers (1€ each, WTF), and
enjoy some ludicrously sweet ice tea - which is strong and bitter, Thai style, then topped up with lots of condensed and evaporated milk. It's sublime.


(photo by Elizabeth Rushe)

Cocolo Ramen, Maybachufer
I love a stroll by the canal down by Maybachufer, a couple of blocks south of Kottbusser Tor. The Ankerklause pub down by the water is legendary. But there's another reason to go there now - a nice ramen restaurant, with a lovely garden for schlurping down noodles on a warm evening. I'm totally spoiled when it comes to ramen, what with Tonkotsu Mare Street a 5 minute walk away. Over in Berlin, I order their Tonkotsu as a comparison - the broth is not quite so creamy from the bones, but it is full of porky flavour, and comes with a generous amount of pork belly and other cuts. lots of fungal, seaweed and gingery bits and decent noodles with enough of a bite on them. You get a neat selections of oils and shakes to pimp your Tonkotsu - I go wild for their onion oil, which has a lovely rich umami taste.



We also enjoy their pickled king oyster mushrooms, an almost creamy sesame spinach, and edamame beans. Schlurp schlurp.



Kirk, Skalitzerstr
I don't usually focus on drinks, but I have to tell you to go to Kirk on Skalitzerstr for cocktails. Everyone I know or met in Berlin would light up if you mention the place. It's the best spot for cocktails for miles, possibly hundreds of miles. The star of the show is the mixologist, a Nick Cave lookalike, rumoured to be from Croatia but to have learned his craft in New York. He silently makes the orders, having the odd chat to the waiting staff but never with the customers; he chain smokes and puts on dark records. I was delighted to hear a vintage PJ Harvey album while I supped my (first class) negroni.



The decor is retro without being kitsch, and it gets really busy later on, so get there before 9. Grab a seat at the bar if you can. Their whiskey sours comes highly recommended.

KERB comes to Hackney Wick

I haven't made enough noise about street food recently. In some ways, street food is becoming a ubiquitous cliché, like pulled pork or craft beer. A blanket term to tick boxes and bring in the punters. Street food could be any old crap served hot from a stall. Pulled pork could be anything from expertly brined, seasoned and smoked rare breed pork, to abattoir floor scrapings doused in sugary BBQ sauce. Craft beer just needs to say craft beer on the pump and people will buy it.

As with anything in London, research and recommendations are needed to cut-through the multifarious options. It's not about being a snob - your same £6.50 could get you a very average burrito or a very good one. Why wouldn't you want the best, if you could? When it comes to street food in London, KERB does the filtering for you with their - dare I say - *curating* of street food traders operating at their markets.

KERB have the pick of the crop on their roster, running regular street food markets in London - they have markets catering to lunching workers at Granary Square (Kings Cross, Tues - Fri), Wednesdays at Spitalfields, Thursdays at the Gherkin, and once a month at UCL.

It's a model which is beginning to emulate Off the Grid in San Francisco, which operates at a much larger scale in a much smaller city (but where street food carts are much more culturally engrained), where literally dozens of sites are run by OTG, with anything between 2 and 10 street food carts there for lunch or dinner, all listed and mapped on their site.

One of the highlights of OTG are their big evening markets where you can spend an evening trying out street food and getting good beer at decent prices - the market at Fort Mason has 32 trucks every Friday night through the warm months. Like London, the scene quietens down through the colder months.

The exciting news for us East London dwellers is that KERB have secured a permanent home in Hackney Wick. Opening in December, KERB will be running street food markets from a big warehouse INDOORS, and hopefully all year round - what with it opening in December and being indoors and all.



Hackney Wick is the perfect location - it's off the beaten track enough that it'll hopefully shake off some of the annoying types you get at the pricey Street Feast in more accessible Dalston. This probably does mark the next stage in the Wick's development and commercialisation, though, which I'm sure many Wickster hipster creatives will mourn.

But I'm pumped, especially living 5 minutes cycle away in Clapton. To whet you're appetite for what you might be able to expect, I'll run through some of my favourites that I guzzle at my once-weekly KERB KX lunch trip.

Kimchinary

Kimchinary is my first street food love, and I've written in depth about Hanna Soderland's expert fusion of Mexican and Korean flavours with her kickass burritos and tacos. The flavours and colours will blow your mind, especially that bulgogi ox cheek burrito with the kimchi fired rice and Asian slaw. Wow.

Spit and Roast

Spit and Roast do fried chicken that makes me weep with joy. Buttermilk brined (natch), its coating has a lovely balance of spice and the perfect crisp. And it's served with a sticky, sweet korean sauce and slaw in a brioche bun. I know this reads like a list of cliches, but each one is Grade A refinement. They sometimes do rotisserie in their van, and their chips are very good.

BBQ Lab

Pulled pork klaxon!!111!!! But this is what I'm talking about with the difference in quality at the same price. These guys know how to do 'technique'. They deploy sous-vide to cook meat to perfection over days and days, with the most melt-in-your-mouth results. But it doesn't stop at the delicately smoked meat - different pickle and topping combinations all the time. The 'lab' in the name gives the game away - they're always experimenting and the results are pretty consistently delicious. Blow torching cheese on top of pickled apple on top of the 53 hour pulled pork just about blew my mind.

Mother Flipper

I first tried these guys down at Brockley Market, and they're one of a number of excellent burger purveyors on the KERB roster (I love Bleecker Burger - soon to open a restaurant in Spitalfields, and Tongue and Cheek's are offaly good), but for me the simplicity of the MF candied bacon and cheese hits the spot every time. Their house sauce and pickles are classic, and the demi-brioche buns just perfect.

Yum Bun

I have a major weakness for steamed buns, but especially when they come filled with an aromatic pork belly and hoisin sauce. It's a rich treat, but given a real freshness by spring onions and cucumber. Yum Bun do these steamed buns with a range of fillings - I recently enjoyed their panko crumbed fish bun, lathered with gochujang spiked mayo. And at Kerb KX they do a good value lunch box, with two buns, two vegetable gyoza and a zingy Asian slaw for £7.

K-MEX and Kimchinary, Hackney

I make my friends and colleagues wince sometimes when they ask about my weekend food plans. Twice recently the answer has been "I'm going to a K-Mex pop up in Hoxton". Rightfully, it raises some eyebrows, especially when I explain it's Korean-Mexican fusion food and it's all the rage on the LA street food scene.

Bear with me, though, because there are good reasons for KMEX being an altogether Good Thing, not just some flash in the pan fad designed to get the twitter mob cramming into pop-ups.

So it all started in Los Angeles, which has huge Mexican and Korean populations, each with their own delicious street food offerings. Cooking in California has a long tradition of fusing the influences of its diverse populations together with its amazing capacity to grow the freshest and tastiest vegetables known to humankind. It was only natural that some people were going to clock that kimchi goes great with cheese, that coriander, avocado, lime and chilli united the cuisines, and both bad long traditions of slow cooking cheap cuts of meat with all manner of delicious fragrant spices.

When I was in California I ate some of Dante Fried Chicken's Creole-Asian-American-Latino fusions, had korean fried chicken and waffles, Chinese food fused with modern European, Asian style chilli cheese fries, Indian burritos...all incredible, exciting and not just an excuse to grab a headline on the latest natty fusion.

Over in London, Kimchi Cult were at the vanguard frying up kimchi with burgers at Chatsworth Road Market, making their own bulgogi fries and fried chicken at pop ups. Kimchi Cult has moved up to Glasgow now and, rumour has it, is looking to open a restaurant.

I am most excited about Kimchinary, run by Hanna Soderlund, who has been representing at Kerb and Street Feast with her *unbelievably* delicious Korean-style burritos and tacos. Think fillings like slow-cooked, K-spice infused ox cheek, Korean pulled pork, kale and miso aubergine, served with kimchi fried rice, cheese, sour cream, Asian slaw, and crispy, sharp Korean pickles.



They are my absolute favourite street food lunch at the moment.

Hanna did a 7 week long residency at Catch on Kingsland Road recently, and I made it along to the final night to eat my way through the whole menu.

We shared dubboki - spicy, chewy, glutinous rice balls, and bulgogi nachos - think aromatic beef, with cheese, sour cream, and guacamole. Both utterly addictive.





The main draw, though, is Hanna's hand-pressed tacos, which work nicely in a sit-down setting - which are slightly harder for me to stuff in my bag as a cycle back to the office on my lunch than her burritos. There are all manner of exciting flavour combinations, such as cornflake fried chicken with sweet corn, Korean pulled pork with lightly pickled cabbage, ox cheek and tongue, and griddled squid and celariac.





The spread was incredible, with each taco a complex but perfectly balanced mix of flavours and textures. I brought a big pack of K-mex newbie friends with me, and all were blown away by every dish.

The pop up is now over, but you won't have to wait too long to try Kimchinary indoors. It seems Kimchinary is getting together with What the Dickens to open a proper indoors spot under the railway arches on Morning Lane in Homerton, which is happily less than 10 minutes walk from my flat. Follow their respective twitter streams for more news as it comes.

And it seems more Korean-Mexican fusion is brewing across London. I went last week to a popup dinner by Kome at Dead Dolls Club, and a variety of dishes got the K-Mex treatment. I particularly enjoyed seared tuna tostadas, where the gloriously fresh tuna meshed deliciously with tasty fermented vegetables, spicy sauces, fresh chilli and toasted sesame.



Also good were bulgogi fries - with aromatic beef, cheese, salsa, and lots of spring onion, which were hoovered up embarrassingly fast.



Even I have been trying my own hand at K-Mex, and now always have coriander, spring onions, sesame seeds, sriracha sauce and kimchi on hand to give a bit of a twist to certain dishes.

My message to you is this - don't be put off by the word 'fusion' or the fact that kimchi is fermented cabbage. Embrace this exciting food, and in particular, get down to Kimchinary, whether at Kerb, Street Feast, or whenever she opens her kitchen in Hackney with What the Dickens.

Sho Foo Doh, Pacific Social Club, Clapton

It makes me happy when my favourite street food traders move on to do pop ups, residencies and even open restaurants. I like to think there's something meritocratic about it - that anyone, in theory, with enough passion and wherewithal could set up a stall, earn a good reputation through  making good food and figuring out how to market it, and then other opportunities opening up...

...which is a nicely nuanced antidote to Dan Hancox's excellent piece in Vice, in which he highlights how pop ups are an advanced form of capitalism designed to inject novelty and urgency to fuel your consumption. Yes this is true in many cases, but pop ups can also be a chance for people who wouldn't otherwise have the capital to showcase their food/art/music to do so, use empty spaces between more permanent uses, and breathe a bit of life into staid settings.

Fumio (aka Sho Foo Doh) made his name as one of the early traders over at Chatsworth Road. His speciality is okonomiyaki - cabbage stuffed Japanese pancakes, topped with toppings like pork belly, prawn and cheese, and then with Japanese worcester sauce, mayo and dried seaweed on top - and he developed a cult following, including the venerable Marina O'Loughlin. 

After a few pop ups in different spots across Clapton (we enjoyed a quick fix when he was at the Dentist while we were deep in DIY), Fumio secured a residency at Pacific Social Club on Clarence Road, which is one of my favourite spots in the neighbourhood. It's a dreamy cafe, with lots of faded record sleeves on the wall, tropicalia, ceiling fans gently whirring around. They tongue-in-cheekily call themselves a 'drop out centre', but they're not far off the mark: PSC has captured laid back island life perfectly.

The menu is short and simple at Sho Foo Doh. There are some tasty appetisers, Hiroshima style okonomiyaki, and then something sweet. And you BYOB, with no corkage charge, so we got through a good stash of local beers from London Borough of Jam.



We shared a number of very different dishes to start. We had grilled lotus roots with dried seaweed, which were lovely, crunchy and earthy; seared salmon with soy sauce, mirin and garlic - the salmon was super fresh, and the flavours addictive; and pickled cucumber with soya sauce. All very delicious.



Meanwhile, Fumio was cooking our okonomiyaki, each of which had a unique combination of toppings and bits. You could have egg or udon noodles, they may or may not be cooked in lard, may or may not have anchovy mixed in, and could be topped with any combination of kimchi, cheddar cheese, pork belly, fermented soya beans, prawns, squid, sweetcorn...



Here, Fumio makes them Hiroshima style, which is where it starts off like a crepe, then with the mixture of cabbage, kelp, beansprouts, noodles, etc on top, before being topped, flipped and finished off with the worcester sauce, dried seaweed and copious spring onions.



We loved it. It's very filling, there's bucketloads of flavour, and with all that fresh veg inside and on top, you can definitely convince yourself that okonomiyaki are pretty healthy too. It washes down great with beer - and it's nice to see this more casual, hearty side of Japanese cuisine in London, in contrast to the numerous sushi chains and super high end restaurants.

Sho Foo Doh is on at Pacific Social Club every Thursday, Friday and Saturday. You might be fine to rock up, but it doesn't hurt to drop Fumio an email (details here) and get a table set aside for you. You'll also soon have Clapton Craft open around the corner to pick up some nice beer too. Top Clapton night, guys!

San Francisco street food

I spent most of September roadtripping around California. Pretty much the most amazing holiday I'll ever have. We started off in San Francisco, tripped inland to Yosemite, back to the coast to drive down Big Sur, and then powered down to Los Angeles.

California truly felt like the world in a place - prairies, mountains, desserts, coasts, cities, wealth, poverty, liberals, conservatives, skinnies, fatties. Not quite the image of tattooed yoga-obsessed wheatgrass-shot-chugging lifeguards we might have over in Britain.

The food was amazing. There were fresh, local ingredients in abundance at every price point. Cuisines from across the world were represented - Armenian? You got it! A specific region in El Salvador? I know just the place. But particularly well represented was food from Mexico, Central and South America, and from the Pacific Rim. Street food is also big, with lots of creativity in that scene and the Californian cuisine.

I'm going to do a few posts about my trip, but I'll kick off with one about San Francisco's street food.
The scene seems to be highly organised, in particular by the Off the Grid crew, who have a roster of street food vendors operating at 23 weekly food markets of varying sizes - their biggest is at Fort Mason on Friday nights and has about 30 stalls. The focus is on high quality, innovative fusions of cultures and cuisines, and prices start at around $8 a dish.

 Bok Ssam's Korean Chicken Waffle

Revising the classic Southern comfort fish of chicken and waffle (brought to our shores with Duck and Waffle), but with herby, spicy Korean fried chicken, tangy Asian slaw, and lots of sticky, sweet, spicy sauce. And the waffles act as sandwich rather than a plate. It was a great combination, and surprisingly un-messy...

The Chairman Truck's Taiwanese buns

Another Off the Grid favourite, The Chairman specialises in Taiwanese baked and steamed buns, which are terribly trendy right now. This is reflected in the queues at their stall wherever they pitch up - innovative Asian is a big deal in San Francisco. We opted for steamed - one with caramelly pork belly and turmeric pickled daikon radish, the other with miso marinaded tofu and raw cavolo nero.

Curry up now's indian burrito and butter chicken chilli cheese fries 

Curry up now is one of the San Francisco street food scene's success stories - starting off as a truck, it's now got three proper restaurants throughout the Bay Area, but still moonlights at a fair number of Off the Grid events. We were looking for "something healthy", but couldn't avoid the temptation of sweet potato waffle fries, topped with creamy, rich butter chicken sauce, and then lots of melted cheese. This went nicely with the burrito - of pilau rice, really flavoursome Punjabi curry, chick peas and onions. Pork belly and beef featured as options, which would make you question its authenticity in the UK, but in California it's all about fusion, and here's another example of good, unpretentious mixing of cultures and tastes to delicious ends.

SOMA StrEat Food Park


SOMA StrEat Food Park is a little oasis tucked between motorway flyovers and entrances, in this no man's land if infrastructure and industry between Mission, Downtown and the hilly northern parts of the city. It's an area in flux - Twitter will soon be moving in to their new headquarters up the street, but hobos pace the streets pushing their trollies, and hostels spill out onto the street. But the crowds pouring through for Tuesday lunch suggest there's already quite the draw.

I opted for Hawaiian food as soon as I saw the cart - an exciting new cultural foray. My $8 got me a generous portion of sweet, slow cooked pork with sesame seeds, really tasty kimchi, a coconut-y, mayo-y cold macaroni salad, and sticky coconut rice. It was homely and authentic, and good to taste a new set of flavours.

But I was slightly jealous of all my friends, all of whom opted for Korean-Japanese rice bun burgers and chilli cheese fries from KoJa Kitchen. I remember hearing about Yo! Sushi entering the burger market with a similar concept and being very sceptical, but this is the real deal - and utterly delicious. Slow cooked, marinaded pork, pungent, earthy pickles, Asian variants on tomato sauce and mayo. The Asian chilli cheese fries were particularly good.

Dynamo Donut, Mission


Dynamo make seriously delicious doughnuts - and sell them from a cafe in Mission and kiosk by the marina. They make creative use of ingredients and flavours in both the dough and the glaze. We particularly enjoyed the maple and smoked bacon for its swavoury taste, while the lemon and pistachio and the apricot and cardamom had a slightly exotic aromaticness. A delicious if not quite health-giving breakfast to power us through a day of scaling San Francisco's hills.

Street food down South

I've lived in London for almost ten years now, and all of that has been north of the river. South London was always been a bit inconvenient - never hated or frowned upon, just further away and harder to get to. Lots has changed since then - better north-south connections with the Overground, the second advent of the bicycle, and of course, the pull factors of good foodie stuff happening south of the river.

I've tried out Honest Burger in Brixton Market, I've stocked up on Persian goodies from the wonderful Persepolis in Peckham, and more recently I've been checking out their street food markets in Brockley and at Maltby Street.

I went to Brockley Market in the middle of our prolonged winter. It isn't in Brockley proper - more on the fringes of Lewisham and Deptford, in a car park next to Lewisham Way. It drew in all the hip kids from across SE London - lots of late 20s/early 30s couples with beards and small dogs, trendy families, groups of students. I thought I was in Hackney for a second.

It was barely even noon before I was in the queue for Mother Flipper - famed for it's delicious burgers. They cooked it from scratch, but before long it was ready. I went for a double candy burger - you don't cycle all the way from Hackney for just one patty! - and it was one of the best I've eaten in London. Really juicy, pinkish meat, with candied bacon, perfect brioche bun, great condiments.



We also stopped off at the Fish Dogs stall, where fresh, warm doughnuts, or Dog Nuts) were being fried up (in separate oil, importantly) alongside fish sandwiches. Sadly our savoury compartments were full (their fish sandwiches are becoming legendary), but we did have enough space for the doughnuts. They were shaped like mini churros, coated in cinnamon sugar and served with a salted  caramel nutty dip.



Absolutely perfect. I love a good cinnamon coating on doughnuts - it reminds me of holidays in Spain or Portugal and getting sweet fried goods from roadside vans.

A few weeks ago we finally made it down to Maltby Street, which is at the Borough/London Bridge end of Bermondsey. It's a fascinating area: sleepy, residential with lots of council estates and new build blocks, but urban and very central - Maltby Street takes place in railway arches. Nearby Bermondsey Street is going through (or coming out of ) a very high end process of gentrification, with lots of foodie destination restaurants and Zandra Rhodes' fashion and textile museum. Maltby Street feels very much part of that, and the vibe was power-professionals having weekend downtime.

Our first stop was St John's Bakery, which is one of the best known units there. Enormous loafs of sourdough of more varieties than you could ever imagine are sold, alongside their legendary custard doughnuts. That's what we went for. The custard filling comes in plain vanilla, chocolate and lemon. I went for the classic vanilla. The doughnuts are light, fluffy and perfectly formed, but the real treat is the custard inside - it's very light and airy, with visible vanilla seeds inside. I tried so hard to make it last more than a few dozen metres, but failed miserably. It was worth the trip alone.



We started with doughnuts because I'd heard scare stories about them selling out. There were still a fair few left at midday, but don't chance it.

Our next call was Monty's Deli for their famous reuben sandwich. The queue was long, but this is generally a good sign when it comes to street food. It turns out the queue was disproportionately long because one of their hot plates wasn't working, so they were at half capacity. And you don't rush good food (luckily there were some samples of their chicken liver pate to nibble on - so luscious).



The fillings were piled high between the two slices of rye - pastrami (home made, really juicy, lots of proper fatty bits), sauerkraut, thinly sliced 'swiss', mustard, sauerkraut and russian dressing. We sat on a wall just outside the market area, and guzzled our sandwiches in silence, with intermittent happy groans. It really was excellent; a really great combination of salty and tangy and fiery and wholesome. 100% soul food.



At both Brockley and Maltby Street markets had a lot of really great looking stalls. I went for the greatest hits first time around, but will be back to try out the other stalls. Both have a good range of produce in addition to street food, so worth going for a top up on 'nice things' too.

Can't get enough ribs

So I told you I love ribs, right? I'm still salivating over the thought of that meal at Pitt Cue Co. But I needed another fix, and it turns out you don't have to hang around Soho at 6pm on a weekday evening and hang around 45 minutes for a table if you want tasty rib meat with sweet and sticky sauce. Not when the rib man is stationed just a couple of miles from work and home.

So rib man is Mark Gevaux, a butcher of many years, and a man passionate about good quality meat, cooked to perfection. He has his stall at eat.st (round the back of Kings Cross near the big new developments) on Thursdays and one on Brick Lane on Sundays. A food day will start in the early hours of the morning, getting the ribs cooking in a barbecue for hours and hours to the point that the meat is melt-in-your-mouth tender.

I was lucky enough to catch rib man on a sunny Saturday when eat.st was open for business to coincide with the Guardian's Open Weekend. It was pretty early and quiet, so no wait for the food. The options were simple - rib meat in a roll - with either/both rib man's homemade Holy Fuck (i.e. very spicy) and BBQ sauces. I went for both - knowing that as much as I like it hot, I also like it sweet, sticky and smoky.



I cycled home in record time, clambered up the stairs, onto the roof terrace and unveiled the beautiful rib roll onto a plate, grabbed a couple of kitchen towels, poured myself a glass of water. It was delicious; succulent, smoky meat, mouthwateringly tender and moist, complimented beautifully by the mixture of the BBQ and mega spicy sauces.



I guzzled up every last scrap of meat, soaking the stray bits of sauce up with the last bits of roll. £5 well spent. And in a warm food coma for the next hour or so.

The rib trend continues developing - and even closer to home - Duke's has opened in De Beauvoir Town, just down the road, and dishing up ribs and home-brewed beer. It's unrelenting, this gentrification meets ribification/gastrofication. I'd be exhausted, obese and penniless if I made it my quest to in all the exciting new openings just in Hackney. But I'll do my best and keep reporting back.

Food/house hunting

The prospect of moving house is always exciting for me. It brings new foodie horizons, new grocery stores, cafes, brunch spots, hidden gems. It's almost exactly two years since we started looking to move to Newington Green, all excited about moving a bit east. We love it here, but we're keen to buy and can't afford the crazy prices around here, so we're looking further east into Hackney. My dream is Lower Clapton, around Chatsworth Road ,and we've been spending more and more time over there, trying out local cafes and shops, cycling the streets and picturing myself living there full time.

Chatsworth Road is an interesting street, higgledy-piggledy Victorian buildings, a mixture of African, Caribbean, Turkish, working class and artsy cafes, shops and take-aways, part run down, part polished up,  views of Canary Wharf at one end and slopes down to the luscious Hackney Marshes at the other. In the Victorian times right through to the mid 90s it held a regular street market, which has been reinvigorated in the last year. I've been a number of times over the past few months, and it promises many delicious eating options - dickensian classics! Japanese street food! Cakes! Artisan cheese and bread!

But the first up I tried out the Moroccan stall outside Epicerie 56, a lovely well-stocked and fairly priced deli. Meat and pastries were sizzling away, and it was a beautiful winter day.



I ordered a chicken bastilla - a thin filo patty, with the most perfumed, aromatic filling you can imagine. Brown chicken meat was mixed with almonds, cinammon, orange blossom and other spices. Just the most exotic and otherworldly taste, but so warm and comforting on a cold day.



We sat on little stools on the street corner and watched families stopping to chat, hipster strumming guitars, kids playing down the side rode. I could definitely live here.

Balls balls balls

In terms of the food blogosphere I'm usually pretty late to get 'on trend'; same applies in most walks of life really. Though in comparison to the rest of the population, including my super clued in workmates, I can still be ahead of the game when I need to be. The latest example is with trend foodstuff meatballs. Apparently they are the dish of 2011, obviously I didn't find out til October, but when I heard tale of Luca's Meatballs hitting Dalston, I was bounding around the office and taking orders for a Thursday cycle order up to Ridley Road.

Ridley Road market seems ungentrifiable. A fantastic thing, in a part of Hackney where new concept stores are popping up almost weekly. It's a full on, stinky, bustling hub of West African diaspora - all dried fish, chilli peppers, broiler hens and music. You can get the cheapest super fresh veg you can imagine - three butternut squash for a pound anyone? Anyway, that a much-hyped meatball shack was opening up had people talking: was this the start of the Broadway Marketisation of Ridley Road? Surely not!

I roll up at Luca's expecting to see a queue of hipsters, DSLRs at the ready. Actually nobody was there, just Luca getting things ready. I started reeling off my order and asked if I worked nearby. I explained that I'd cycled up from Old Street (only two miles) and was very excited. I was rewarded with a tiramisu on the house. Nice one! Luca was incredibly charming and excited about his business, and later tweeted a photo of me with my haul.

The menu is simple - there are (beef) meatballs and spinach and ricotta balls. You can have them on a ciabatta (with tomato sauce, provolone cheese, lambs lettuce) or atop tasty polenta with a range of sauces: roast tomato, spicy tomato, mushroom/cream, gorgonzola. The base price is £3.50, but for an extra 50p you can have an extra ball or a small portion of veg - when I went it was braised baby beetroot.



As we tucked in back at the office, it was thumbs up all around. I'd opted for the ciabatta and it was just wow. The meatballs were splendid, perfectly formed, simply and subtly spiced with just a hint of fennel. The tomato sauce, again, simple and pure, combined perfectly with the smoky provolone. I was just about in heaven. My colleagues had the polenta boxes: one, a veggie, had 4 of the spinach and ricotta balls, the other went half and half. Both were blown away with theirs, particularly appreciating how well done the polenta was. I had a sample of the veggie balls and was surprised at their pungency. Will definitely be going half/half next time.





Luca's offer is expanding - it's positioned outside the newly licensed Wu's Market Bar, which is all tropical and bright inside. Luca will be serving up meatballs late into the night as well as anti-pasti platters and more. I'll be back.

New job, new lunch

Just last week I started a new job at Shelter, so I've moved from the heady well-heeled heights of Muswell Hill to the bustling, urban, trend-setting pavements of the Old Street area. It couldn't be further removed from Muswell Hill's child-friendly cafes and tapas restaurants - Old Street is bang in the epicentre of London's work economy - with offices for massive global corporations, super trendy media agencies and charities all standing shoulder to shoulder with independent cafes, shops and thriving markets.

The Shelter building is right next to Whitecross Street Market, which has stalls serving lunch every weekday, and a full blown food market on Thursdays and Fridays. I was amazed by the scale of the market and the sheer number of workerbees of all walks of life queuing up at their favourite stalls for a tasty lunch to eat back at the desk.



Being a spendthrift Edinburger, I'm usually all about the packed lunch and try to avoid frittering away my money on cold, factory-made sandwiches. But with all this on my new doorstep, I have resolved to treat myself to lunch out once a week (if I'm being good). So last week I went to Luardo's burrito van, which I had read about in Time Out's article on London's best burritos. I joined the (very long) queue and waited patiently, like a good Brit, to place my order.



Back at my desk, I unwrapped the foil and sunk my teeth in. The pork was generously portioned and so tender it melted in my mouth. It was full of fresh coriander, piquante salsa, rich cheddar, rice, sour cream and luscious guacamole. It more than filled me up and had me wanting to try the other fillings, including the beef, which had sold out by the time I got to the truck.



With so many great stalls to visit, I'm going to make my mission to try all of Whitecross Street's offerings a regular feature.