street food – Yellywelly

Beseder the Bell and Brisket!

15 Jul 201520 Jul 2015 Yelly

When I was little, my father talked about salt beef and chicken soup all the time. He always waxed poetic about how life was in kibbutz that he stayed in. He studied in Israel and loved his time there, eventually converting to Judaism. Most of the memories that I remember him sharing with us while we were growing up was about the food that he ate.

I am more partial to chicken, but will eat beef, occasionally. But I do love salt beef. Especially when it’s done right. We met the lovely Bel Shapiro of The Bell and Brisket, oh maybe, three years ago, at the Brewer Street Market (I think it was in the Brewer Street parking building). Her salt beef is beautiful and delicious and yummy and succulent and flavourful…I could go on. I am such a fan. But this fan hasn’t been able to have a salt beef fix in a very long time. That salt beef desert ended last Friday though.

I got a “naked” Old Timer from The Bell and Brisket (sans any carbs) so I could enjoy the lovely salt beef in all its deliciousness, only adorned with horseradish and mustard and complimented by pickled gherkins and beets and it was beseder! Well, not just good. It was AMAZING!

Yelly Eats

The Bell & Brisket Fix

7 Jun 20138 Aug 2017 Yelly

I remember really craving salt beef sandwiches. And I remember the great salt beef sandwich search. It was quite the exciting thing, trying to find the best place for salt beef sandwiches in London (I wasn’t expecting to find it in Essex–I’m glad to be proven wrong though, so if there are good purveyors of salt beef sandwiches in Essex, can I get a shout out?). I now have two favourites for salt beef sandwiches: The Bell and Brisket and Monty’s Deli. But the sentimental favourite will always be The Bell and Brisket because it was the first place I’d gotten the long-awaited sandwich from.

My first salt beef on rye sandwich with American mustard in the UK was from The Bell and Brisket and even now, I still smile when I remember how good it was when I took that first bite! It was so good! And the sandwich looked sooooooo pretty! I remember wanting to take a picture for posterity. Considering that this sandwich traveled from London to Harwich, I thought it traveled quite well!

One of my favourite salt beef sandwich incarnations is the salt beef with kimchi either on rye or on a bagel. I remember having it first at Queen’s Head in Soho when Bel had her pop-up shop there. She had meal deals and served a selection of pickles with her salt beef sandwiches. I was a bit dubious about the kimchi with the salt beef, but it was two of my favourite food things: salt beef and kimchi. It wouldn’t hurt to try it! It was a salt beef eureka moment. It was quite the East meets West food fusion moment. Who knew salt beef would work amazingly well with kimchi. Well, obviously, Bel knew!

It was ages since I had a salt beef sandwich from Bel. Last week, on Friday, I saw a tweet from Bel saying she was at KERB in Kings Cross. I quickly sent her a tweet to ask her how long she was going to be there. I thought it was the best time to catch her since I hadn’t had a Bell and Brisket fix in ages! I was quite relieved that we managed to catch her there. I had my salt beef and kimchi bagel and was in salt beef heaven!

The meat is wonderfully flavoured and is meltingly soft. There is something fundamentally comforting about hot salt beef sliced fresh right in front of you. The salt beef sandwich is quite an experience and I would recommend The Bell and Brisket to anyone and everyone! The Bell and Brisket is at Kings Cross with KERB on Fridays, every week, until 2:30PM. If you’re there, make sure you get one of the sandwiches offered because they are dee-vine!!!

Yelly Eats

Chicken Licken

22 Aug 20128 Aug 2017 Yelly

I love chicken. I love it fried, braised, barbecued, stewed, roasted. Chances are as long as it’s chicken, I will eat it and I will love it. I could probably eat chicken all year without complaining. You could probably say I am slightly pollo loco!

I’m lucky that most of the fast food restaurants in the Philippines serve chicken. While it may sound weird to some people, chicken is almost always served with rice and some sort of gravy or sauce. But most places that serve fried chicken will almost always have mashed potato and gravy on the menu as a side. It probably seems very American but there you go. Fried chicken and mashed potato in gravy is, in my opinion, a match made in fried chicken heaven!

When I lived in Atlanta for a while, my love for Southern fried chicken grew. Chicken in the South was so much better than KFC (and don’t get me wrong, KFC in the South seems to be even better than the usual, but that may just be me!) and the mashed potato was even more amazing than the mashed potato that you got in those little styrofoam tubs that you got from fast food restaurants. I was in chicken heaven. Every single element of southern fried chicken made me smile: from the crispy fried chicken batter to the juicy chicken pieces! To borrow KFC’s slogan, PROPER southern fried chicken was of the finger-lickin’ good variety.

I moved to England nearly 4 years ago and I think I spent nearly that much time looking for great fried chicken. Don’t get me wrong, the various southern fried chicken take away places do have their merits, particularly the ones near us. They’re okay, not amazing, but okay if I needed a fried chicken fix. But obviously, it was chicken and chips (I used to call them fries) and not chicken and mash…and I almost always had to make my own gravy. No one seemed to think that mashed potato and gravy was a good flavour combination. I even went to my old standby KFC, expecting to see the same things on the menu but boy, was I disappointed! There was no mashed potato and there was no gravy and the chicken wasn’t as good as I thought it was. And so began my quest for the perfect southern fried chicken.

I’ve bought chicken from lots of places, from different supermarkets, had meals in a lot of restaurants but I’ve never really found the kind of chicken that I really enjoyed: crispy, flavourful batter, slightly salty and juicy chicken. Until that fateful day in July. Alan had read about Roost who served chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy. And not just any chicken, it was chicken marinated in buttermilk, battered and fried! It was proper southern fried chicken, the way southern fried chicken is supposed to be made! Or at least that’s what it said it was. After looking for nearly 4 years, I think you wouldn’t blame me for being slight skeptical.

We made our way to the Dalston location Friday after work where that week’s Street Feast London was happening and ordered a serving: 2 pieces of buttermilk chicken with gravy and mash. I was prepared to be disappointed. But as I stabbed my fork into that crispy batter, the crackle that I heard calmed my doubtful heart. Batter that sounded like that had to be some sort of good! And bite of juicy chicken with a little bit of batter made me smile. It was SO good! The next bite had to be a fork-full of chicken, batter, mashed potato and gravy had me closing my eyes in absolute enjoyment. I’m salivating while thinking back to that first mouthful of chicken-mash-gravy. The chicken was perfect and the mash was creamy-buttery. I made the decision to share a 2-piece chicken meal with Alan (yes, I have been known to demolish a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and rice in the Philippines!) because we were at Street Feast LDN and there were other food places to try (and, if I’m honest, because I had prepared for disappointment, I didn’t want to have too much of the chicken left over if I didn’t like it! I am, apparently, a fussy eater!). But as we walked away from that parking lot in Dalston, I was thinking about the chicken. I wanted to turn around and order another chicken with gravy and mash to take back with me! It was THAT good!

We had our next taste of chicken when Eat Street was at Exhibition Road 2 weeks later (a little thing called the Olympics had descended on London). This time we each had a 2-piece meal, absolutely no sharing! And I’m very glad to report that the chicken and gravy and mash were as perfect as I remember.

If you’re ever in London and in a street food market, and you spy the Roost truck, run, don’t walk, to it and ask for a 2-piece chicken meal with gravy and mash as a side. You won’t regret it! To find out where Roost are, follow them on Twitter. They are @weareroost.