Bye Bye Jimmy...

Wow. That was a long gap between blog posts. And meanwhile, so many things have been happening - not all of them to do with choc.

I handed Choc Star over to Shrimp & Ben for the summer who took it all over the place, serving up the brown stuff at festivals, parties, markets and film sets. Then they handed the van back and I welcomed him with open arms. It was strange not being at the helm this summer, but more than that it was strange not having all of those chance encounters at the counter. This is the magic of the choc-mobile and which has kept me hooked all these years - it's the opportunity to act as a window into so many different worlds, and to meet all those new smiling, choc-loving people.


There I was this summer, putting a load of extra time into the growth of eat.st, and that meant a whole lot more computer time than I'm used to. The abstract world...electronic communication, copying people in. As soon as I got back in the van it was like a surge of relief as I returned to the primal pleasures of serving someone what they've asked for, receiving the cash, having a chat and then waving them on their way. So simple yet so good.

Now, as I juggle my Masters with running eat.st, Choc Star has taken on more of a hobby-like role. I take Jimmy out about once or twice a week - either a private booking or an event or King's Cross - and after all that abstraction it's like being on holiday when in Jimmy. Something so calming about the mechanics of operating that van. Physical processes, immediate transactions, lots of treats, out in the open air slinging away with the best of them.

But now, each time I steer that old rascal around town, I'm drinking it in, knowing that our time is fading. Yes friends, Jimmy is about to be put out to pasture. Or, put another way, the new Low Emission Zone looms on 3rd January and he ain't going to pass it. So off he'll go to the countryside, never to be seen within the M25 again...except as signage:


So all of you who have enjoyed your time at the van these past six years, come and find us before Choc Star in this particular guise is no more. We'll be at the Chocolate Festival 9-11 December, King's Cross 25th November and 16th December and the Real Food Market 17th-18th December (see links to the right of this page).

Then off he'll go, to pastures new and I shall knuckle down to completing my Masters and ploughing forward with driving British street food forward.

Play in Choc Star will be suspended until further notice.


But I'll be putting Jimmy - the van - up for sale. Get in touch if you'd like to start your very own food biz on wheels and you think Jimmy could be the one for you. He's a great motor, can travel the length and breadth of this nation and is ready for the next chapter of his rich and interesting life.

Email: feedme@chocstar.co.uk

The end of my adventure in this van, could be the beginning of yours...what a brilliant time I've had being on the road in the choc-mobile.

I left my heart there...

...or at least any hope of wearing summer clothing again this year. The blueness of the sky was incredible. I would wander around San Francisco's audacious slopes fairly pinching myself to be there, in it, amongst it - revelling in having suddenly transported myself to one of my favourite cities in the world - all on a stomach pulsing whim.

They catch you sometimes, these gut-fuelled desires. Whether it's sensible or feasible or not, that part of your instinct will not hush up until you obey it. I like obeying it. Makes me feel like I'm on course. Keeps me alert.

The last one I had was on a rock in India where I became consumed by the need to return to Uni and study Urbanism. I'm fascinated by how cities work, by how we all negotiate the space that we occupy within them. How every city has a different personality, like people, and functionality akin to the human body. And how public spaces, with a little imagination and vision, can provide a city and its people with a vital aspect to this personality.

So it is that Choc Star + eat.st + my upcoming Masters amounts to a deep interest in the question of how instrumental street food is to the animation and integration of urban public space. When I heard that over in Fog City La Cocina were holding a street food festival and two day conference on this very subject I got all hot under the collar and was on a flight in a matter of days.

You can read about the festival here and I'll be writing about the conference shortly but, for now, here's a little round-up of the sweetness coming my way during my San Fran Express trip.

Pud number 1 in La Dunya on Polk St. Settled into my hotel and then headed straight out in pursuit of my first glass or two of some really good zinfandel. I love a cheeky zin. And they always give you the most enormous glass to quaff it from in Cali. For fear of falling off my perch I ordered some food, culminating in the owner wheeling out three different puddings for me to try. The brownie was perfectly fine, the Tiramisu nice enough, but this lemon situation above had me all up in my clover. A great buttery layer of tangy lemon curd atop a crunchy base of ginger biscuit. It worked for me - I felt perfectly normal the next morning, like I'd been on Pacific Time for weeks.

This:

Soon turned to this:

and I was off into those streets like four dogs on a three-legged cat.

Bi-Rite Creamery ice cream (Salted Caramel and Malted Vanilla for me).

Rocking.

Tartine friand, cacao nib rocher and Mexican sugar cookie (there was something else in there which was way too good to wait for its pic to be taken). I love Tartine. There's something almost apothecal about imbibing from it. Feels like it'll help you to live a long and prosperous life.


Equadorian, hi-camp jellies at the street food festival. I've never seen anything like it. Reminded me of those T-shirts you grow in water.

I'd heard so much about the Creme Brulee Cart and was devastated not to be able to try the Mexican Chocolate. They were dishing out frozen ones to the people a few in front and then torches down, party over.

But I did get to have this as consolation...

Hot off the press, slippy-slidey, melting choc/mallow, squidgeable, crunchable hot mess. Thanks to Kika's Treats for the light relief!

Then someone hawked me this Alfajore (Peruvian dulce de leche cookie) for $2, which I ploughed into before remembering to snap. That keeps happening to me lately.

Oh, and these cheeky little Madeleines were sat winking at me - all sassy and keen - as I passed by Delfina on my way out of there. When it comes to pure comfort cake this has to be up there. And you just feel so damn special with one of those in your hand/mouth/tummy.

Speaking of Delfina, if there was one thing I needed from my San Francisco express visit it was meatballs, California style. I took myself off for a cosy dinner a une (such a luxury) to the Pacific Heights branch and got well stuck into those polpette. I mean seriously stuck in - to the point that, along with a dozen or so other memorables, I swear I'll be recalling them well into my granny years. Anyway, of course I needed dolce after and opted for a moreno cherry sundae with bitter chocolate sauce and toasted pistachios. I did have something of a waddle to my walk home that night.

Brunch at Americano the next day - ahead of the conference - was knock-out. Along with empenadas, panzanella, corn frittata, beef satay, a whole world of Bloody Marys and other deliciousness, they hit us with some sweetness too.

This was a Malaysian porridge:

Nice but perhaps a little too wholesome for me.

More up my strada were the homemade 'pop tarts' - ricotta and blackberry compote:

and the mini cupcakes:

Pink lemonade, Guinness, spiced and Red Velvet. I banded around the idea of the 'cupcake backlash' to the people I was sitting with and they thought it was the most hilarious thing ever. No visible signs of this phenomenon hitting US shores as far as they were concerned.

Later I hit the Humphry Slocombe/Big Gay Ice Cream truck party in the Mission (but not before getting an education in real bourbon from a ripped guy in a low-down dive bar round the corner). What a contrast it was between that and this:

The cake was fine but what really got me inspecting the back of my head was the much raved about Humphry Slocombe ice cream. Hot diggity. My eyes pulsed with fever as I surveyed the list. The queue was ridiculous, I had to be ready with my order. In the end, despite stiff competition from the Salt & Pepper and Balsamic Caramel flavours, I went for Malted Milk Chocolate and Secret Breakfast with hot fudge sauce and frosted peanuts.

I nearly keeled over, straight into the arms of an enormous Tranny. People - it was that good. Not French cleverness, nor Italian velvet, but a pure creamy, delicious pleasure with an almighty flavour that I haven't experienced in London so far.

The next day my hangover (after a heavy duty session with Southern food legend John T Edge) prevented me from exploring sweetness much further. It was all about the tacos, the Po'boys and the empenadas. Except these did catch my eye and I did have to try.

Organic doughnuts. Who knew? This vanilla cookie one did actually feel like it was doing me good in a fairly wholesome way. Not wholesome green pulsey porridge, more soulfood wholesome - my favourite kind.

Chocolate Thoughts from India

In February I escaped from here. Accompanied by my darling mum and her narcoleptic friend, we high-tailed it off to India and a warmth that had seemed unimaginable in London. I retrieved some ghastly old gear from one of my charity shop-bound bags and swiftly gave it away on arrival in Mumbai - at once shedding not only winter encumbrances but all feelings of wanting to hibernate as well.


In between dealing with narcoleptic 'crashes' (quickly resolved with a ready lit cigarette) in busy places, pokey G&Ts and cramped, saddle-sore taxi rides, I threw myself into that city with zeal. It engulfed me with its thick heat, each noise and smell that rang out and clamoured towards me felt somehow cushioned.

Safe. I felt safe. I felt like I could've gone anywhere and, though surrounded by so much and so many, I was just caught up in the horizontal life that everyone else was rumbling along in too. India for me was about a life lived in the open air - with all the grimness and magic that this entails.


In Crawford Market at the end of the day, there is the meat enclosure - dangling pieces of fraying red flesh providing a tennuous curtain for the bathing butchers in the background. Each one delighted to be washing clean the days blood.

On Chowpatty Beach we picked past the burrowing rats and the soggy plastic bags to find families bedding down in smog-worn bivouacs, street hawkers plying bhel puri, itinerant chai-wallahs serving up beachside nectar and a whole swathe of neon-lit food shacks competing for your rupee by promising the best pau bhaji on the strip.


I rode the trains from the Northern Mumbai suburbs to the gut of the city's established order in the South. How the view changed - from sprawling organised chaos to unfinished concrete structures; disused buildings, over-used chawls, armpits in my face, warm sticky skin next to my warm sticky skin; hot breeze, funky odors, oiled hair, Bhangra ringtones...


In Bandra chickens pick around in fresh soil under the shadow of Swarovski's Indian flagship and super handsome men serve scamorza risotto in a/c dominated cafes. And down at Oval Maidan are a hundred separate cricket matches being played by teams of varying size and ability - from full whites and trophy tent to sandals being used for wickets.

And then there are the long distance trains! Nudging up against accommodating neighbours, the whole carriage seems animated. At each stop comes another opportunity to snack: vegetable cutlets, bhajis, pakoras, banana fritters, chai, ice cream, bhel puri...and then there's lunch - a 35rp feast of vegetable biriani, curds and soup. Luckily those locomotives are long and I could walk it off by striding from carriage to carriage.


There is much to say about India but what can't be ignored is the eating! From the land of impeccable, relentless service comes food - at all times, in all ways. We barely came up for air. In Goa we nyammed fish curry, millet fried mussels, tandoori Kingfish and real-deal pork vindaloo. We ate masala omelettes for breakfast, Goan bread, butter and jam, fruit salad, pancakes...

Spicy, fragrant, rich and meaty, what I began to crave - and very quickly - was my beloved CHOCOLATE. Sometimes it just wasn't available save for a little pack of cookies bought from the shop. But I did what I could in the name of sweetness - here are some of the results:


I knew it was never going to blow me away but I had to try Trishna's take on the brownie sundae. Best things about it were that it was sweet and warm, otherwise a bit on the Grade D side of things.


Train sweets - peanut clusters, bars, brittle. Kept us quiet for a bit.


La Plage on Aswem Beach right at the top of Goa was such a nice surprise. Despite threats from encircling Russians and protection demands they are still turning out French-style desserts. This crepe with Nutella and toasted walnuts went perfectly with the 'vanille fraiche' Chantilly cream.


But it was nothing next to the Captain Morgan flambeed bananas with iced white chocolate chaser. My God - I was in my clover!


Less successful was Monginis cake shop in Panjim. I loved Panjim in all its dusty, noisy, withered Colonial glory but this bakery didn't really cut it. I'd been sold the place as somewhere that made proper English biscuits so was pretty geed up. The mistake was taking this literally. I had a massive cake craving though so set about devouring as much of what was on offer as possible: dry, vanilla packed fairy cakes and some seriously plastic looking frosted layer cakes...


We had about seven cakes between us, three bottles of Coke and it still only came to about 75p. I certainly sprang back onto those hectic streets with renewed vigor after that little session.


After a Thali that had no end we were nigh on spherical. Our distinguished looking head waiter with the lustrous white hair looked so crest-fallen when I declined the sweet option so I went for it. It was strawberry ice cream - lurid pink, bubblegum fruity. He was pleased anyway.


Aah, the pancakes! I'd forgotten how much I love and need pancakes. The best ones of the whole trip were above, at Casa Susegad in Loutolim (honey & banana) and the Nutella smothered beauties on Cola Beach. Sometimes I'd have three a day.


Margao market, end of the day. Who will buy these bouquets of buttercream?


Gujurati sweets given to my mum on her birthday. We looked at them, took them out of their box, took pictures of them, carried them round with us and eventually they were infiltrated by some particularly determined ants in our Rajasthani tent on the beach.


Off in the interior, living on a purely South Indian diet with no cookies or pancakes for gimmicks, I tucked into this Kheer most heartily. It's a kind of rice vermicelli take on rice pudding: Warm, buttery, cardamon scented it was welcomed after the fiery gobi curry. I think I had about three helpings. (The bowl was quite small).


Hampi and backpackers' central. Quite a rude awakening after coasting between the lines for so long. Right along the river and through the moonlit drenched banana groves lay this barrage of reassurance for the homesick traveler.





Back in Mumbai we headed for the Salt Water Cafe in Bandra and none of us could resist the opportunity to eat flourless chocolate cake, chocolate and hazelnut torte or dark chocolate truffle cake. It was all a bit Sara Lee if we're being honest here but after tying a few Margaritas on none of us cared.


It's a bit embarrassing to admit this but, joined only by my Cola Beach pancakes, the most satisfying desserts for me on the whole Indian voyage were these two souffles from Indigo and Indigo Deli. For savouries there is no contest - I went wild for all that that country was dishing up - but for sweet things, for chocolatey things, the prize has to fall here: Vanilla souffle with bitter chocolate sauce plunged in by night; by day the bitter chocolate souffle with creme anglaise and a warm peanut butter cookie.

I don't remember having better souffles for years.

I heart New York like WOAH!

I arrived back from my New York trip two weeks ago - and haven't quite known how to tackle the task of explaining in any meaningful way quite what went on over there. It's like this: take a person (me) who has a massive sweet tooth, dispatch them to a city that was founded on sugar, pique that person's curiosity with hundreds of tips, articles, blogs and general heresay and then set them loose for three weeks to rampage the streets and devour all in sight.

Of course it wasn't just sugar I was shovelling - but savoury stuff can be discussed elsewhere. This is the sweet spot and it was as evil as it was good.

Not that The Big Gay Ice Cream Truck's famous 'Choinkwich' didn't deliver a stealthy layer of salt. I tracked the highly amusing Doug down in Union Square on his last day of trading for the summer. He was holed up in the truck, dipping and grinding - thrusting out of his hatch all manner of precarious and obscene looking ice cream snacks.

I went straight for the Choinkwich. I needed to know. Between two crunchy choc cookies were voluptuous layers of chocolate soft-serve, on top of which, stretched out in a translucence that was awkward, lay two slices of streaky bacon. I got stuck in, the soft-serve exploding out of either side of the cookies, a crumble, then into the fatty fronds. A kind of glycerined saltiness prevailed, then grease. Grease alongside cold, creamy choc - and cookie crumbs all up in my new Brooklyn nails. I thanked him for the experience and got the hell out of there.

My friend Josh who I stayed with in Williamsburg introduced me to his favourite restaurant in all of New York. All the way down Grand St, under the tracks and to this really odd, pointy little building lies Moto, sold to me as 'just like the restaurant in Delicatessen'. Three of us were given a table for two. A gravel voiced guy sang Ragtime with his group. Questionable items dangled from the ceiling and the lighting was LOW. The grilled donuts came after pudding - we couldn't resist those soft, sugared mounds.

Uptown in West Harlem on a grey, hungover day. I cut through Morningside Park at just the right side of daylight and then chanced upon Make My Cake - a contender for best red velvet cake in New York. I'd already had Cake Man Raven's in Brooklyn so thought I'd give it a whirl. I loved both but there was something about the cosiness of this spot on 116th St that got me all caught up by the cake - and all those other cartoon-like extravaganzas in the counter.

Frozen custard. Those two words are like a great jolt of joy to my entire system. The Shake Shack was high on my list of places to check out - but when we got to the front of the line I froze. How the frick was I supposed to make one choice? I went for a malted chocolate shake in the end. We hauled our orders over to a table and then set about the challenging task of sucking up what was essentially a pint of ice cream - with perhaps a 5 second blast in the microwave. Fat bitch!...but rich and delicious and full of (naughty)goodness.

Someone told me about Roni Sue and her Pig Candy when I was in Paris. Here she was in a little shop in Essex Street Market in the heart of the super Jewish Lower East Side peddling choc-covered bacon. Apparently her sales go soaring right before Passover. Originally sold by her neighbour (and Steve Buscemi look-a-like Jeffrey the butcher), the Pig Candy really caught on and now she's one of the market's main attractions. I tucked into a maple and bacon lollipop and bought some hog choc for the good folk back home (not really my kinda thing as it turned out but great for the looks on people's faces when they receive it).

Clinton Street Bakery: home of the city's best blueberry pancakes. I've had a thing about short stacks ever since being taken to California in the '80s. I was then removed from my new spiritual home and taken on a hippy trek round Mexico via brake-less buses. The highlight for me was whenever we got to stay in 'American style' hotels and I got to re-live my diner dreams. These ones were giant, pillowey discus' of berry studded perfection, drenched - so as to make each 'cake lousy with syrup - in warm maple butter.

Needless to say my walking style took on a heavy waddle character for the next two hours and totally hindered my eat/walk ratio for the rest of the morning.

Hungover in Williamsburg, en route to Queens - a Van Leewan ice cream truck appeared. Unable to consume coffee for fear of feeling like the the end of the world is nigh for the next six hours, I went for the next best thing: a scoop of espresso ice cream. It got me all the way to Greenpoint - a wonderful, warm October day, striding along thinking I was doing ok - before dumping me as soon as I'd finished it, into the truth of the matter: wretchedness.

I picked up this pecan Chelsea Bun from the hottest baker in Bristol, Rhode Island. Well, that's what I was told anyway. The bun was like a meal.

My pal Simon urged me to visit Otto. 'Forget about the mains' he said, 'straight for the gelato'. I almost took heed but can almost never turn down a plate of rigatoni with salsicce, so began with that. It was damn good and a perfectly manageable size, which was unusual. Then to the gelato: salted caramel, milk choc-chip and olive oil with Maldon sea salt. Meredith Kurtzman is New York's best ice creamist according to many. It was light, super smooth, intensely, cooly flavoured and really pepped me up for the hike uptown that afternoon.

A tray of pecan blondies from Kim's fabulous Treats Truck. We became fast friends as soon as the words 'choc treats from a van' were mentioned. It was so fascinating being in someone elses mobile sweet zone. Kim is a proper grafter and as much as I put in the hours at all sorts of unsociable times, this girl never stops. Her chocolate chip cookies were my ideal kind: chewy, extra buttery and studded with deep, dark, fruity choc chips.

And as for her peanut butter cookie sandwiches...fugeddaboudit.


One of my inspirations for beginning Choc Star happened when I was last in New York. A visit to Mariebelle and a taste of their Aztec hot chocolate really got me thinking about our own, largely hopeless hot chocolate offerings over here. It was small, powerful, spicy and gave me that inside grrrr that makes the world seem right. That was five years ago when my taste buds were perhaps a bit less focussed. This time, I'm sad to say, the hot choc tasted like it was from a packet - albeit a far superior packet than an Options or Galaxy sachet.

Egg, a diner round the corner from where I was staying was a revelation. A bit rock n roll, brilliant service, warm, inviting and serving almost wholly egg related dishes. Pancakes, waffles, biscuits, Chelsea Buns, omelettes and great big doorsteps of brioche French toast. If you're feeling cheeky (I was) then you can get a grapefruit Mimosa to help things along. We didn't want to leave.


Things got kind of strange at Momofuku Milk Bar. There we were, sheltering from the horrific, whipping rain and just up for a small slice of something each...when the order got messed up and they decided to bend over backwards to make it better by giving us one of practically everything on the menu. We got compost cookies (pretzels, potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch, chocolate chips), candy bar pie (chocolate crust, caramel, peanut butter nougat, pretzels), cereal milk flavour soft serve, cornflake choc-chip cookies, more soft serve and then...CRACK PIE.

I'd heard talk of this stuff all the way over in Brooklyn. It was described to me as like taking all the pecans and the pie crust out of a pecan pie and then turning up the volume on that...stuff in the middle. What we were confronted with was a pie made entirely out of sugar, save for a delicate lacing of rolled oats, there to give the impression of a base.

I'd nearly finished it before I remembered to take a pic - and was wired for the next thirty minutes, whereupon I wanted more. That's how it works.


Sweet potato and pie crust flavour bowls of soft-serve in Momofuku Noodle Bar. Pie crust :), sweet potato not so much.

Chocolate bread pudding at the Hudson. We sat in this strange Harry Potter-esque hall with long banquet tables and enormous high-backed chairs, dining on the finest mac 'n' cheese and chicken Caesar salad. We shared the pud - I ate most of it.

Chocolate and peanut butter ice cream from Emack & Bolios in the West Village. The woman really tried to hard sell me these freaks of nature...

...but I said 'Listen lady, that is just a bridge too far'.

There were all sorts of other treats I managed to find space for in my body but think I'd be pushing it to fit on here. The long and the short of it is that New York is a mecca for all kinds of sweetness. You can't move without seeing a heavy frosted cupcake or a big bulging Rice Krispie treat. Ice cream parlours are round every corner and open til way late at night and I've never seen so many cake shops in all my life - not even in France.

If you like food - of any description - go! Jump into that adventure playground of greed and let it swallow you whole. There may be hints of gout nuzzling up to you by the end of it but that town will feature in your day and night dreams for years and years to come.

Big up to the city that makes you feel brand new!