Peddler Special Edition: British Street Food Awards – The Final

Flats Doughnuts

The Thai Food Van

Massaman is their signature for a reason. Refined by their mum over 30+ years, it’s the curry they confidently call the best you’ll ever have — and they’re sticking to it.

Once the UK street-food season is over, they head to Thailand and pick their own lime leaves from farms in the north, before having them dried and shipped back for the following season. They only bring enough to last the year — alongside two varieties of basil, because one is never quite enough.

Even the trailers have had the chef’s touch — both designed by her, a first-class graphic design graduate.

Good food, good looks, excellent credentials.

Friends Corner

Proper night-market vibes. Flames licking dangerously high. Music on 10.

Five chefs in leather aprons — singing and chanting if the vibes are right — grill Japanese-style pork belly skewers over binchotan charcoal on a konro grill, brushing them with tare as they cook.

The result? Smoky, caramelised pork with crispy edges and an irresistible glaze.

Stones Throw

Stones Throw Kitchen began with a simple frustration: why should plant-based pizza so often taste like compromise?

So they bought a battered old horsebox, turned it into a rolling pizza wagon and started proving people wrong — one blistered crust at a time.

Their pizzas and panuozzo are vibrant, generous and entirely plant-powered without ever feeling worthy or joyless. This is food made by people who love food first and labels second.

Mama Lala

Di at Mama Lala serves authentic Sichuan street food, with Dan Dan noodles as her signature dish.

One of Sichuan’s most popular and iconic noodle dishes, it’s cooked fresh to order with greens, minced pork and split pea purée, then finished with homemade chilli oil and homemade pao cai — Sichuan vegetable pickles.

The result is a brilliant introduction to authentic Sichuan mala: that distinctive combination of spicy heat and tongue-tingling numbness.

Paella Garcia

Paella Garcia has been feeding London proper Spanish paella for more than half a century, making them less a street-food trader and more a culinary institution — with impossibly large pans.

Their bright red gazebos are impossible to miss, and the scent alone can stop people mid-conversation. Family-run and fiercely authentic, they serve everything from seafood paella to a vibrant vegetarian version packed with peppers, fennel and broad beans.

One spoonful tastes like sunshine and saffron had a very successful meeting.

The Burger Society

Michelin-trained burger obsessives serving precision-built comfort food.

There’s something primal about a juicy, two-fisted burger, but The Burger Society manages to bring a little refinement to an everyday classic. It helps that Chris Murray worked at the Michelin-starred The Fat Duck and The Hand and Flowers, retaining plenty of high-end suppliers and techniques along the way.

They worked with butchers Aubrey Allen to create a burger patty unique to them — one that no other burger place uses. The buns are made in-house to a recipe used at Michelin level, while the burger sauce is made by the team, with every element carefully chosen to complement the next.

The bacon double cheeseburger is the obvious place to start. Come hungry.

Pudd

Dessert lovers, this one’s for you.Pudd creates indulgent sweet treats loaded with silky sauces, fresh fruit, crunchy toppings and decadent extras. Think warm puddings, rich chocolate creations, creamy layers and seasonal specials designed to satisfy even the most serious sweet tooth.

Naughty Boi Smashburgers

Naughty by name, unapologetic by nature.

Naughty Boi’s smashburgers are all about crispy edges, juicy centres and flavours that don’t hold back. Born from years of food-truck experience and “very serious burger testing” — their words, not ours — Naughty Boi is what happens when obsession meets execution and refuses to be subtle about it.

Ember

Ember is a premium live-fire food truck based in Fife, Scotland. Think street food cooked on a Josper.

Operating from a bespoke 20-foot container kitchen built from scratch, Ember is designed around wood-fired and charcoal cooking. The concept bridges restaurant-quality food with the energy and accessibility of street food, with a focus on bold flavour, quality produce and the magic that happens when food meets fire.

Joy & Gladness

Joy & Gladness and Chef Bigga bring Jamaican flavour, huge personality and serious comfort food to the table.

Chef Bigga is a larger-than-life character, and his food has the same warmth and energy. His Jamaican heritage runs deep — his grandfather had six jerk pans — and that family connection to food is at the heart of what he does.

His Jamaican goat curry is the kind of dish that demands attention: slow-cooked, deeply seasoned and packed with layers of warming Caribbean spice. Tender goat absorbs all those rich flavours as it cooks, creating a deeply savoury curry with the perfect balance of spice and richness.

It’s the sort of dish that rewards patience, delivering the depth and comfort that makes Jamaican curry so special.

But just as memorable as the food is Chef Bigga himself. He brings huge character, energy and storytelling to the experience, making a plate of food feel like an occasion rather than simply a meal.

This is Jamaican cooking with soul — bold, generous and full of flavour, served with the warmth, joy and personality that makes people want to come back for more.

Hungry Cowboy

Hungry Cowboy is a barbecue obsessive bringing serious low-and-slow cooking to the street, with a healthy dose of yee-haw, big hats and Western swagger thrown in for good measure.

Think smoky pulled meats, loaded brioche buns and generous portions piled high with house-made slaws, sauces and toppings. The barbecue is cooked low and slow, creating tender, deeply flavoured meat with all the smoky richness you’d expect from someone genuinely obsessed with the craft.

But beneath the cowboy persona is someone as Welsh as they come, giving Hungry Cowboy a distinctive sense of character and place. That combination of Welsh personality and American barbecue culture makes for a trader who is great value, highly entertaining and instantly recognisable.

The food is generous, indulgent and built for proper barbecue fans, with melt-in-the-mouth meats and bold sauces at the heart of the menu.

Cegin HalfnHalf

Cegin HalfnHalf showcases Welsh-inspired cooking with plenty of Indian personality, bringing together locally sourced ingredients, exceptional technique and the creativity of modern street food.

At the helm is Kuldeep, a softly spoken chef who trained at Benares and is now creating a new Rajasthani menu that brings another dimension to the Cegin HalfnHalf offering.

Expect slow-cooked meats, rich gravies, comforting Welsh flavours and beautifully crafted dishes that put local produce centre stage. The food takes inspiration from Wales while bringing in the depth, complexity and spice of Indian cooking.

Kuldeep’s biryani, slow-cooked for six hours in a sealed pot, is particularly remarkable — a dish of extraordinary depth and delicacy, and some of the finest biryani you could hope to taste.

There’s a real focus on quality and flavour: great local ingredients, cooked with care and turned into generous, satisfying dishes with a distinctly contemporary edge.

Cegin HalfnHalf is Welsh food with Indian flair — rooted in local produce and tradition, but adventurous, beautifully executed and full of flavour.

Suya Boiz

Suya Boiz

Suya Boiz bring the bold, smoky flavours of Nigerian street food to the grill, serving up the kind of suya that delivers serious flavour in every bite.

Their smoky Nigerian barbecue is charred over the grill, juicy inside and generously coated in their signature yaji spice blend. Smoky, spicy and savoury, it’s the unmistakable taste of suya — the kind of food that instantly transports you to the vibrant street-food scene of Nigeria.

Their jollof rice is another standout. While its origins are generally traced to the Senegambia region, Nigerian jollof has become an icon in its own right, celebrated for its smoky depth, bold tomato flavour and unmistakable character.

And don’t miss the puff puff — golden, fluffy balls of fried dough and a much-loved Nigerian favourite. Light, moreish and wonderfully comforting, they’re the perfect sweet finish to a plate packed with smoky, spicy flavour.

And Sadiq? Charming. Very charming. Suya Boiz bring a vibrant, unmistakably Nigerian street-food experience, with the grill, the yaji and those big, bold flavours doing most of the talking.

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Oh Mei Dumplings

Oh Mei Dumplings make hand-pleated, pan-fried beef dumplings inspired by the bold, comforting flavours of Hong Kong-style home cooking. At the heart of the business is Mei herself — a lovely, hugely passionate character who has become something of a North-of-England institution.

Mei first encountered the British Street Food Awards in 2015, when she went along to watch. Inspired by what she saw, she eventually decided to enter herself — and it proved to be a very big moment for both Mei and the business.

Her dumplings are packed with juicy, savoury beef, fresh ginger and fragrant spring onion, then folded by hand and cooked until the base is crisp, golden and beautifully caramelised. Bite through the crunchy underside and you’ll find a tender, flavourful filling wrapped in soft, chewy pastry. Every dumpling is slightly different, with its own handmade character.

The food really is a family affair. Mei’s mum provides the recipes and inspiration behind those comforting home-cooked flavours, while her daughter — just 11 years old — works front of house. When Mei’s big moment came on the British Street Food Awards stage, she brought both her mum and daughter up with her. It was a wonderfully personal reflection of what makes Oh Mei so special: family, food and a huge amount of heart.

The dumplings are served with Mama Mui chilli oil — the sauce that helped keep the business going during lockdown. Made from a family-inspired recipe, it’s packed with carefully infused aromatics, warming spices and chilli, creating a rich, savoury oil layered with garlic, spice and deep umami, followed by a lingering heat that enhances rather than overwhelms the dumplings.