Ok so I admit I am “Johnny come lately” when we are talking about visiting the Nottingham Street Food Club in the Victoria Centre (or do we have to call in Intu these days) in Nottingham. It has been open quite a while, I missed all the initial hype, and to be honest I had just viewed it as a vehicle to promote the MasterChef contestant Pete Hewitt.  Having said that, I do quite like him and his food, he does serve up some ‘quite excellent fried chicken sandwiches’.

They do seem to provide space for other vendors to show their fare, but I still feel as though it is just a shopping centre company  jumping on the bandwagon making a street food ‘food court’ That kind of annoys me in some ways as that is not ‘street food’, but then again it could be good in showcasing the local ‘street food’ options. But then it is only open on the weekends, so what’s that all about?

Anyway

So this particular day the options were supposed to be Homeboys (but they were not there), “I love Ostrich” (not a massive fan), “Patience Lounge” selling Jamaican food who I was quite keen to try and see, and “Taste of Korea” who I assumed might just be selling Korean food.

It came down to a choice between “Patience Lounge” and “Taste of Korea”, the only thing that stopped me going all Jamaican was that I had cooked Jerk Chicken on the BBQ the night before, so Korean it was to be 🙂

Menu at Taste of Korea

So when at a street food kind of place, I do like to see a sample of the food that they are offering, but here my choices were based on the pictures on their menu signage. I kind of wanted to try both the “Korean style egg roll omelette” and one of the “Bulgogi” sandwiches, so guess what? I had both 🙂

Korean style egg roll omelette

Korean style egg roll omelette (gyeranmari) served with finely chopped onion and vegetable. Now I have to say that this did not look ‘quite’ the same as the menu picture but you know what? It was really tasty! I was kind of surprised, I hadn’t paid attention when ordering and thought it was going to be like an egg roll, but it was really a folded thick omelette.

Now I read that traditionally these are filled with carrot, spring onion, and onion. I didn’t seem to have any carrot but perhaps I had to ask for ‘vegetable’ as the menu did say that was ‘optional’ (my bad).

Flavour wise it was quite simple, very well seasoned with salt and pepper, and a little bit sweet and tangy from white vinegar. In my mind at the time of eating I was thing Shaoxing Rice wine vinegar as a flavour memory from my own home cooking.

I was really quite enamoured with the flavours in this cheap and cheerful bit of street food, £2? fecking bargain!

Beef Bulgogi Sandwich

So I was dining (is that the right word at a street food place), or maybe chomping (sounds better) with Mum and we both wanted a Bulgogi sandwich (a beef one)

The menu described this as Bulgogi sandwich served with tangy slaw and creamy spicy sauce (egg optional) [I had the egg] 🙂

This was good as I got two photographs 🙂

Beef Bulgogi with a Fried Egg

I loved this sandwich, very simple looking, but oh so tasty and delicious! Where to start in the ebullient praise that is about to gush forth?

OK so the fried egg is always a welcome sandwich bedfellow, I am such a slut for that runny yolk in my mouthful and admit that I would top anything with a fried egg. It is like bacon in that, ‘I think’, it makes everything better, so ‘bacon and egg sandwich anyone?’ 🙂

That was just one step of flavour genius, the extra bonus and the main event was that bulgogi beef!

Loved the flavour of the beef, soy, ginger, garlic, sesame, onion, and the usual salt and pepper seasoning. It was kind of rich and sticky, chewy and meaty.

This was a really great piece of “Street Food” and I was actually very happy to talk to the chefs behind it who normally have a space on Clinton Street. I will most certainly be heading over there one lunchtime to try them out!

You know what? maybe that was the whole point of the Nottingham Street Food Club? 🙂