Who runs the British Street Food Awards?

The British Street Food Awards were founded back in 2009 by Food Mutiny, the events company started by award-winning food journalist and food consultant Richard Johnson. Once a restaurant food critic, Richard noted that some of the best food he has tasted hasn’t been in Michelin starred restaurants, but on the streets! Passionate about the exciting and changing nature of street food in the UK, only the best food traders make it through the application process. Quite remarkably, we were one of the lucky few! The Old Skool Bus and Kitchen Ltd, known as Old Skool Bus Events, was selected out of 3000 applications to take part in the southern heat of the finals at Gunwharf Quays on the 3rd-5th of May 2025.

Street food and food trucks aren’t just a fad, or a fleeting trend. Around the world many countries’ most famous dishes are born from traditional quick delicacies, produced by locals on the street, using the best of their native ingredients. We talk about the history of street food in our ‘Most popular street food menus’ blog.

‘Food Mutiny’ launched the British Street Food Awards because Richard saw the changing landscape of street food emerging throughout the UK and Europe, and wanted to bring together and celebrate some of the ones putting all the hard graft in, and recognise some of these great menus. You can see the European awards here.

Who can enter the British Street Food Awards?

Food traders, stall holders, event caterers, cafes and restaurants can enter, so long as they demonstrate great sourcing of produce for their street food menus, creativity, authenticity, presentation and taste!

In April 2025 we received an email from Richard himself, saying that he was delighted to announce that Old Skool Bus Events had made it through the thousands of applications and had been selected as one of the 14 street food traders to compete in the southern heats of the finals! WOW, we were absolutely blown away! Our director, Kate, works on the basis that if you don’t enter anything then you will never win anything, and that if you don’t put your business in the spotlight yourself, then it’s very unlikely that anyone else will. We never expect to be shortlisted, and certainly not win, but for every opportunity that arises, the business is given the chance to create, be challenged, put under pressure to perform their very best, and always grow in the process. This was certainly a time when our team were put to the test.

Which menu did we develop for the British Street Food Awards?

Kate and the chefs put their heads together to develop something a bit different to enter for these awards, as we knew there would be some incredibly high standard ‘traditional’ street food menus in the competition. As we are predominantly a British team serving from an American food truck, we were torn between British and American, and landed in Mexico! We regularly serve Mexican style food and tacos, plus Kate likes to spend time each winter exploring the country and working remotely from there, so it is a particular favourite of hers. However, we weren’t about to try and be authentically Mexican when we aren’t, so the chefs came up with a British & Mexican Taco menu with a twist – a ‘Brexican’ Taco menu if you like, although we did not call it this! (Not to be confused with anything to do with Brexit either!) A twist on the South Coast of England, seeing as we were in the Southern finals.

The BSFA finals for the southern heat were being held at Gunwharf Quays in Portsmouth, a perfect base for the 14 finalists to gather from Cornwall, London, Devon, Brighton, and more. Being on the first bank holiday in May it also promised to be a super busy one for attendance, as the 80th anniversary commemorations for VE Day, honouring the veterans of the second world war, were starting that weekend. Timewise, this was actually pretty tough for the team too, as we were only two weeks away from starting our 9 week contract on site at Glastonbury Festival for crew catering, so time was tight. But we were not going to miss this for the world!

Who were we up against in the southern finals?

So, the competition was STRONG, we knew we were not likely to go through to the National UK finals, but were going to enjoy the ride! There were some awesome KERB London traders in the finals, Spanish Basque country food by the Bask Street Boys, and Ayal London with her Turkmenistan favorites. There was authentic Banh Mi by RoVietnamese, slow cooked legs of lamb by Cut the Mustard, Korean fried chicken by Rok Kitchen, Japanese by Hakko House and top London restaurant Oshpaz serving their Uzbek street food cuisine! To name a few.

Trading time, and gathering votes

The beautifully laid out street food market in the heart of Gunwharf Quays opened at 11am on the Saturday for three full days. Every customer who entered the market was given voting slips, and all the traders had a voting box in front of their stand. We had a glitterball one of course…. we do love our disco ball decor! We were recommended to offer full portions on our menus, but also a taster priced version, to encourage people to try lots of different traders. Our team that weekend were chefs Libby, Sophie, Lucille and Simon, and front of house it was Kate, Ava (Kate’s niece) and Nik. We were well prepared with our pickles, fillings, tacos stacked neatly by the grill, and our two salsas in mini dipping pots at the ready. And we were BUSY! It was fantastic! We were visited by a couple of Instagram food influencers and bloggers, you can listen to how tacos were flying out of the food truck with sales here on one of their reels.

Street food community vibes

The team all said what an amazing event this was, and we all agreed it was our favourite trading event with our food truck to date. The kitchen worked well with that menu, sales were good, feedback was amazing, and the food did look (and taste) fantastic. We were so proud of how we had performed. Quick, friendly service, and hot, awesome street food. Well done team! What we really felt was heart warming was the community vibe between the food traders, we introduced ourselves to each other, tried each others food, and generally supported each other. We would like to thank the Bask Street Boys and Ayal London especially, they were neighbours either side of us in the market, and we organized to share a fridge trailer in advance to cut costs for each of us. They were both so lovely, and we certainly enjoyed sharing some coconut tequila shots with the basque boys next door! Shhhh!

Judging and the results

On the bank holiday Monday it was judging day. Each trader had a 10 minute time slot allocated to present their full dish to three food critics and experts in the office. It was really nerve wracking, but Richard’s comment made us smile “Well, we are only meant to take one bite from each item, but I am going to have to finish this crab taco!” he said. We didn’t win a top 3 place or go through to the national finals, but we did get a judges mention of recognition in the speeches, and that was enough for us. We said we wanted to go and perform the very best we could, and serve the very best tacos we developed, and we did that!

Congratulations to Hakko House, Cut the Mustard, and Oshpaz for going though to the UK finals, up against the northern heats finalists. Their food really was excellent, and they were experts in their cuisine.

What an absolutely awesome atmosphere the British Street Food Awards created, the event was perfectly organized, very well attended, and our team enjoyed it immensely. We would highly recommend visiting one of their events next year and sampling lots of delicious street food!

For more information on our street food menus, booking us for weddings, private parties, festival trading or corporate events enquire here.