Rant: Posh fast food

Its appearance is one of the stranger trends to have swept the country in the past few years: the cooking of poor America tarted up for the British middle class.

Something has been lost in translation. The posh version will be beautifully presented, but there’s just not enough of it. With American food, you’re not meant to be able to walk afterwards. And did I

mention the prices? Near our flat in Lewisham, south London, there’s a street-food venue called Model Market where fried chicken and chips will cost you £9. But that’s nothing; a can of beer costs £6. £6!

Alexei Sayle, in a recent stand-up routine, joked about this trend. ‘All the burger vans down my local market are run by the class of Charterhouse of 2005.’ And, sure enough, the Model Market is filled with amusingly named stalls like Mother Clucker run by well-spoken twentysomethings.

Sayle went on to mock the sort of gap-year street food of cooks such as Thomasina Miers – ‘There’s a Vietnamese pho stall in Peckham run by the Queen and Prince Philip.’ It was different when I was a

student. At Oak Fisheries in Headingley you were served by a woman with enormous arms who looked as if she was born to work in a chippy, while an unsmiling man with a combover fried the fish in dripping. It’s still the best fish and chips I’ve ever had.

Places like the Model

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Market can get away with the high prices because they are not just selling food; they are selling a lifestyle. It’s run by a company called Street Feast which is something of a misnomer as you are not in a street; you are in a carefully constructed middle-class fantasyland, like a music festival without bands. If the high prices don’t deter the wrong sort of people from wandering in, the entry fee after 7pm will. While the stalls are run by the middle class, the people collecting rubbish are immigrants. It’s London in microcosm.

Meanwhile, at Lewisham’s real street market, you can buy a bratwurst hot dog for £3.50, jerk chicken made by real Jamaicans for £4, and a pint at Wetherspoons for £2. HENRY JEFFREYS