day seven recap: Street Food Revolution with Jamie Berger & Victoria Stewart
Yesterday’s street food revolution workshop focused on the rise of young people accessing really, really great food on the streets of London. Jamie Berger, co-founder Pitt Cue and Victoria Stewart, food journalist and Evening Standard features commissioning editor, stressed the influence of social media in being the key ingredient in kick starting the street food revolution. Stewart mentioned how social media helped capture the “buzz’ for street food and therefore allowing food startups to expand and grow from a food truck in a Peckham car park to a restaurant in Soho. This was exactly how Jamie Berger co-founded BBQ specialist, Pitt Cue. Within days of Pitt Cue opening, Twitter had created a fantastic buzz about their BBQ truck and the tweets had caught the attention of food bloggers, local and national press. Berger mentioned it was the early followers that took them where they are now. Pitt Cue now has a restaurant in Soho and a pop-up on the Southbank and Berger now wants to focus on sourcing his own produce and even joked about creating a Twitter account for the farm.
Victoria Stewart again mentioned how the passion for this “guerilla dining” was down to how Twitter created an incredible hype which sold out events instantly. For example the Tweat (tweet and eat) Up presents Ribstock, a pop-up in Soho, which is a battle between the UK’s best rib chefs, sold out in no time. Twitter has also encouraged the top chefs in London to open up to a new and younger audience, changing London’s fast food scene by making really great food affordable. And recently ES magazine published their 20 best food trucks where most of them only reveal their locations on Twitter. These pop-up phenomenon’s such as the eat.st collective which promotes British street food and Red Market, East London’s original night market inspired Stewart to create her own blog called the London Street Foodie. Stewart blogs reports from markets to food trucks and everywhere in between.
Show us your photos of your favorite street foods, food trucks or home-made meals. We want to see and hear what makes your mouth water. Tweet, blog or post #citizenMreports or email us at citizenMreports@citizenm.com.
