Truly, madly, pop up crazy

We love pop up, we love street food, we love moveable feasts. Paying an entrance fee to be allowed to eat someplace doesn’t seem to be a problem, nor does queueing up, canteen-stylie, to get your fare. Have we lost our minds?

All over Europe, they’ve popped up like crazy this summer. Once the sad little side show at music festivals and fun fairs, they have become the main attraction themselves. The food truck is pushing the restaurant out of the picture. 

The pop up aspect of these kitchens-on-wheels is what seems to appeal most of all. They are there when you are there, just when you need them most. In theory. Because in practice, it’s you traveling to the food festival which often involves a bigger trek than popping into your local café. On your doorstep they are not.

The chefs in these food trucks, on food bikes or even in vintage little caravans have to work under less than ideal circumstances. A small kitchen, a limited amount of gear and the work pressures of your average maccie D’s. It’s like asking a window washer to do without a ladder, an artist without a studio or a butcher without a block. It’s doable, sure, but you can’t really expect them to work miracles, can you? So how come that curry, kept warm for hours on end, is so expensive?

I can hear you thinking: but I love that there’s so much so choose from! And indeed, when you take the whole of the festival and see it as one big happy restaurant, the wide choice is certainly a bonus. You’ll have to queue up for each singular item separately, though, to collect your full meal. Plus once for the wine. Your food will get cold, you have to squat because all the chairs are taken and, to add insult to injury, you have to tidy up your own mess. Value for money? I beg to differ.

Yet, there I go, running excitedly towards the next food festival. Have I lost my mind?

Eat a lot: Indian ayurvedic street food, Kreuzkölln

Every Tuesday and Saturday it's in our Kiez: this funky looking food stall selling vegan ayurvedic Indian street food. It comes with a chef that looks the part: turban on his head, white pointy Sikh beard and a somewhat impatient demeanour. The banner on his trailer advertises colourful pictures of dishes he doesn't actually sell and cute looking Indian children. The whole thing is a blast of colour and garishness in the polished world of the hipster street food market.

Our man sells only a few dishes (the secret of a good street food stall if you ask me): vegetable curry (€4), vegetable samosa's (€2,50), lentil soup (€2,50) and pappadums (€1). When he runs out, he runs out. Since I decided to have lunch at 1.30pm, the curry was gone, but the soup and the last few handmade samosa's were mine.

The flavours were fantastic: vibrant, fresh and spicy without too much heat. If you like it hot hot hot, have a teaspoon of the green chili relish at the till and you're sorted. Don't skip the samosa's, if only for the sauce, which should come with it's own DOP (made in Berlin), it's so good.

With summer coming, this is the place where you'll find me for a healthy lunch: at the most cheerful stand on the market.

Indian ayurvedic market stall, Tuesdays at the market on Schönleinstraße, corner Lachmannstraße, Saturdays at the bio market on Herrfurthplatz.

Eat a Lot: Bite Club, Kreuzberg

Sometimes something happens that makes me realise I'm totally out of the loop. That, or the city I live in is just too blinking big. This happened again last week, when I heard of the second instalment of a new foodie event. A foodie event. New. In Berlin. And I had missed the first gathering? Oh no. Best go and check it out pronto.

And so I went to Bite Club. It's best described as a gathering of mobile food vendors, the ones that normally show up to provide the all-important nosh at festivals or events. Only this time they ARE the event. Quaint campervans, pushbike-drawn carts and flappy bunting everywhere. Sprinkle a DJ, a few bars and a seating area floating in the Spree on top and you have your own mini summer festival. You won't even notice the Arctic Monkeys aren't there.

I learned a few things as I watched the infinitely more trendy and clued up Berliners go by:

1) käsespätzle = tasty in summer too

2) black = the new black

3) a jute bag = the must have accessory 

(baby twins do well too but they're not quite as easy to carry around)

4) non-sparkly blanc de noir wine = soooo my favourite wine

5) if you want to try the Korean barbeque, get there early

I had the käsespätzle (€4), selbstverständlich. It was by far the best käsespätzle I have ever tasted. Soft, salty and endlessly cheesy thanks to the Algäuer and Emmenthaler cheeses. The crispy fried onions and chives on top were a winner too. I also tried the shrimp burger (€6), which turned out to be prawns scattered on a crusty bun rather than a patty of some kind. The prawns where lovely and knackig (ah, let's say: lush) though. And, from the same van, cayenne and melted butter popcorn (€1) which totally fills the hole while you wait for the loser in your group to survive the queue for the Korean barbeque. It's all a bit on the expensive side considering the small portions, but good it was. The drinks (a cocktail, a posh glass of wine) are a fiver too, so bring you own beer, poor Berlin style. No seriously, you can, our deck chair neighbour did the same, and he looked clued up enough not to have missed the first instalment.

Bite Club, Hoppetosse, Eichenstraße 4, 12435 Berlin (next to the Badeschiff), website 

Next event dates: 30 August, 13 and 27 September, 6pm to midnight

PS I saw this jute bag at Etsy - it seems very Berlin somehow. Must be because everyone here looks EXACTLY like the couple on the bag...

10th Berliner Bratwurstmeisterschaft

Bratwurst. Germany's most celebrated food. No matter what the event, somewhere there will be someone grilling sausages to serve to the hungry masses. Yesterday, the event revolved around the food itself. It was the 10th Berliner Bratwurstmeisterschaft. Yes. Yes. Yes. It was time to vote for the best sausage in the city, in the county, heck, there was even an outer region category (with only one contender. They won). I was most excited, though, about the 'creative' sausages. Marzipan and chilli sausages. Pumpkin and mango sausages. Orange and cinnamon sausages. Some where blackened and finely ground in their skins (the spinach and cheese ones), some were too big for their rolls and chunky (the apple and coriander ones).

Apple and walnut sausage

Mackerel at the market

I bumped into the cutest little street market today, on Schönleinstraße (corner Boppstraße, right outside the wonderful Hudson's) in Kreuzberg. It consisted of just one greengrocer's, one baker's, one of those little coffee carts, a flower stall and two people from Ostsee selling freshly grilled fish. I sat on the pavement in the sun, eating my mackerel sandwich. What a way to start the weekend.

Makrelenfilet im brötchen, €3.80

Schönleinstraße Saturday street market

Drink a lot: bubble tea

When it comes to food trends, there's hardly ever a real scoop to be had. We've been having tiny fits over things like cupcakes, ecological eating and balsamic vinegar for years, and believe we're well ahead of the game when 'discovering' new variations on the same old themes: think whoopie pies, farmers' markets and cider vinegar respectively. Ooh. Exciting stuff.

So you can imagine my delight when a Whole New Trend unfolded itself right under my nose. You see, my 'kiez' (neighbourhood) has suddenly exploded with bubble tea shops. The tiny little shops are tucked away between Neukoelln's kebab sellers, one euro shops and the Turkish supermarkets, so I have to be forgiven for initially thinking bubble tea was Turkish. A drink to be enjoyed, perhaps, with your nargile. Totally wrong. As soon as I saw someone come out of a shop holding the actual drink, I realised: it's an Asian thing. (Stepping in and looking at the people - unmistakeably Asian - behind the counter also helped...)

The Asians like their sweets mealy, artificially coloured and highly processed. In shops and coffee places all over Asia, you will find things like crustless sandwiches in cute shapes filled with a sweet paste, chocolates flavoured with the faint taste of cherry blossoms and brightly coloured 'tea' drinks with bits of jelly suspended in them. And that's where the bubble tea comes in.

Bubble tea is a tea-based drink, sweetened by a syrup of your choice and as many different flavours of tapioca 'pearls' (chewy balls made of cassave flour and boiled) or jelly bits as you can stomach. Rainbow jelly, passion fruit, green tea, yoghurt, aloe vera, lychee or mango. It doesn't sound that appealing so far, now does it? The ingredients are shaken, cocktail style, over some ice, strained into a 500ml plastic beaker and sealed. You then get to stab your straw through - extra large to accommodate the sucking up of the balls and jelly bits.

I doubt there is any tea to be found in this drink, and of course it is highly processed and seriously unnatural. Needless to say I wasn't expecting much, flavourwise. However. My jasmin green tea, green apple drink with lemon jelly floaties tasted refreshing, jasminey and not too sweet. Even the jelly bits were palatable, nice even. I loved the fact there are no conventional 'bubbles' in bubble tea - i.e. no carbonated water. Soda drinks make me burp (sorry) and really, how natural is drinking a can of Coke? I may have found a great alternative to the ubiquitous Club Mate for upcoming hot summer days.

Maybe it's time to say goodbye to that widely accepted food trend of 'natural' foods. All hail to the additives. After all, the Asians seem to live long and happy lives on them.

Chicken legs in a Mexican mole

This is the second of my unpublished Mexican street food recipes, a mole. A real Mexican mole requires a very long shopping list and hours of cooking. There is chopping, mixing and roasting involved. It contains difficult to find chilli varieties, stale bread, nuts and then another twenty or so ingredients. This version (for recipe, click 'read more') is super simple and quick. It most probably won't fool a Mexican person, but it has the basics covered - chillies, chocolate, nuts - and is incredibly tasty and rich.

Mackerel tostadas

Last year I created some easy peasy Mexican recipes for the Allerhande street food special. Allerhande is a complimentary Dutch magazine published by supermarket chain Albert Heijn (the Sainsbury's of Holland). The special never saw the light of day; it was killed somewhere in a ferris wheel of corporate approvals... Of course, all recipes that appear in such supermarket-owned mags use prefab mixes and other processed ingredients that are, you guessed it, for sale at said supermarket. Despite this, two of my Mexican recipes use mainly fresh ingredients and are made from scratch. One of them is this one (for recipe, click 'read more'). The only ready made product in it is the flour tortilla. I'm not a huge fan of factory flour tortillas - they're usually dry and tasteless. However, if you brush them with oil and bake them in the oven they become crispy, like tortilla chips.