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Fish and chips is the major British contribution to the worldÊs repertoire of street food. It is filleted white fish, usually cod or haddock, but possibly other species such as plaice or rock salmon (dogfish), dipped in batter and deep-fried, accom-panied by coarsely cut chips (fries). Fried potatoes are sometimes mentioned as a 19th-century street food, and cold fried fish was hawked in north London streets by Jewish peddlers. Where and when the two got together is unknown (both London and northern England between Bradford and Manchester are suggested), but they were popular by 1900 and have remained so.

Fish and chips are usually prepared in special fish and chip shops whose opening hours (generally midday and from 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. until late) reflect peak times of demand. Until worries developed about printerÊs ink, portions were invariably served on newspaper, at which point the question „Open or wrapped?‰ indicated a choice. Buying open meant immediate consumption in the street, seasoned with malt vinegar and salt. The smell of hot fat, vinegar, and newsprint evokes memo-ries of frosty evenings for many Brits. Wrapped indicated that they would be taken home and eaten in private, a treat to which even those with status to defend some-times succumbed. There are regional preferences for certain fish (a wider variety in cities, especially London) and the frying medium (beef dripping in parts of north-ern England).

London in the 1860s

The relative poverty of British street food is recent. In 1861, the social reformer Sir Henry Mayhew described the street sellers of eatables and drinkables in his work London Labour and the Lon-don Poor. They included sellers of pea soup, hot eels, pickled whelks, fried fish, sheep’s trotters, baked potatoes, ham sandwiches, pastries, pies, boiled dings, plum dough or duff (a type of pud-ding), curd and whey, cakes, ginger nuts, ice creams, and medicinal confection-ery among other things. To wash them

down, one could buy ginger beer, sher-bet, lemonade, elder wine, rice milk, or peppermint water. Coffee stalls (appar-ently an innovation since the 1840s, when the common hot drink had been saloop, a version of Turkish salep) were popular and sold other hot drinks as well as sandwiches, boiled eggs, bread and butter, and watercress. Mayhew vividly described the vendors, their wares, and their customers and detailed the daily and seasonal rhythms associated with the different foods.

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Scraps, fragments of batter detached during cooking, could be added. Mushy peas (dried green peas cooked to a puree) are often available. Curry sauce, a type of thick heavily spiced gravy, evolved sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. Fish cakes, slices of fish between two slices of potato, were also available until recently. A chip butty is a sandwich, a white bread bun with chips and tomato ketchup or brown sauce.

Sausages dipped in batter and fried, roast chicken portions, and meat pies are also sometimes sold in fish and chip shops. Mediterranean travel led to a demand for squid rings dipped in batter and deep-fried. Late 20th-century developments associated with Glasgow included haggis, pizza, and infamously, Mars Bars, each item coated with batter and deep-fried.

Meat Pies and Pasties

Pies, usually beef, with onions and sometimes potatoes are a common snack food.

They are sold from hot cabinet bakeries, fish-and-chip shops, and other outlets. Pas-ties are similar, but the pastry is folded to enclose the filling, with a seam down one side. They are a traditional food of Cornwall, but the idea has spread well beyond the southwest of England and has recently become the basis for a chain of shops.

Sausage rolls, sausages baked in pastry, are also popular.

Ice Cream

Perhaps the most ubiquitous street food is ice cream. In parks, at fairs, on seaside promenades, and around housing estates, roving ice-cream vans announce their presence by tunes played on chimes. Under the brand name Mr. Whippy, they dis-pense vanilla-flavored soft ice cream piped into wafer cones, with optional rasp-berry syrup. A „99‰ has a flake (a type of flaky chocolate bar) stuck into the ice cream. Other companies also sell ice cream made with varying degrees of authen-ticity and ranges of flavors. Although well known in England before the end of the 19th century, ice-cream selling as a trade was vastly expanded by an influx of Italian immigrants who sold hokeypokey from chill cabinets mounted on bicycles.

Shellfish and Seaside Foods

Seaside resorts have a strong tradition of street foods. As well as outlets for fish and chips, ice cream and seaside rock (candy sticks with patterns or words running through them), shellfish stalls are a feature of these towns. Portions of shellfish, es-pecially tiny brown shrimps ( Crangon crangon ), prawns, cockles, winkles, whelks, dressed crab, and latterly crabsticks (made from fish protein and crab flavor), are sold for immediate consumption. They are usually sprinkled with vinegar and eaten from disposable packs using wooden forks.

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Fairs and Markets

Hot dogs made from frankfurter sausages heated in water served in a split roll with mustard and onions are sold at funfairs and other outdoor meetings. Toffee (candy) apples and candy floss (cotton candy) are also often sold at fairs, but fairings (usu-ally sweet biscuits spiced with ginger) are now mostly extinct as fairground food.

The range of foods sold in fairgrounds, at agricultural shows, and in farmerÊs markets has expanded in the last 20 years to include hot sandwiches of grilled bacon or sausages, and hog roasts of pork, served in bread buns with sage and onion stuff-ing and apple sauce.

A strong London tradition, sometimes found in other cities, is a winter one of hot roast chestnuts, cooked over coals and sold with a little salt.

London and Lancashire: Two Special Traditions

The „Eel, Pie and Mash‰ shop featured in poorer areas of London, especially the East End. They sold eels boiled and cooled in a jellied mass, or hot with liquor, a thin green parsley sauce, and mashed potatoes. Small meat pies were an alternative.

Such shops still exist but are fewer.

Black puddings and black peas are a tradition of urban markets of southwest Lancashire. Black puddings were heated in hot water and served with mustard.

Black peas, small round dried peas cooked until soft and served hot and dressed with vinegar (always malt), were sold in markets and at fairs. These have de-clined in popularity as the industrial communities that demanded them also declined.

Sandwiches

The sandwich, a favorite form of transportable snack from its origin sometime in the late 18th century, has developed a multiplicity of forms. Originally sliced ham or beef with mustard between two slices of bread, these have evolved into a vast range, from more traditional bread rolls filled with meat or cheese and salad to wraps of flatbread around Chinese- or Indian-style fillings, panini with cured meat and cheese, and filled croissants. They are available from many outlets, but most obvious in supermarkets, chain stores, and chain cafes that have become a feature of the British high street, also selling coffee, soft drinks, and pastries to takeaway.

Fashion and marketing both play a part in the choices presented.

Foreign Influences

Immigration has brought food from the Mediterranean, China, and India to Brit-ain. Turkish döner kebabs, minced lamb cut in slices from a mass mounted on a

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spit, served in pita bread with salad are now sold from hot food shops and vans as a late-night snack. Pizzas are available from many independent and chain shops.

Takeaways selling Indian or Chinese food can be found at any settlement above the size of a large village, although the food is often taken home for consumption.

Other imported ideas include chains selling fast-food burger or fried chicken.

Laura Mason

Further Reading

Clun, Chris. Eel, Pie and Mash. The Museum of London, 1995.

Mason, Laura. Food Culture in Great Britain . Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004.

Walton, John K. Fish and Chips and the British Working Class 1870ă1940 . New York:

Continuum, 2008.

Greece

Street food is not quite as widespread in Greece as it is in other countries in the region. One reason is the ubiquity of coffee shops that serve snacks ( meze )·and tavernas·small informal eating establishments offering bread appetizers, salads, soups, mains dishes, wine, and ouzo for lunch and dinner. Most have outdoor areas with chairs and tables that spill onto gardens, courtyards, even the pavement. They are typically open from noon until late at night.

However, in urban areas, street food is an important source of breakfast for many Greeks, especially in the capital Athens in the south and GreeceÊs sec-ond largest city Thessaloniki in the north. Morning commuters purchase freshly made koulouri (small ring-shaped bread covered with sesame seeds) and little pies from mobile vendors or local bakeries. They can be eaten in oneÊs hands.

Koulouri street vendors generally close down their stands at noon. Some even sell their wares at traffic lights to commuters in their cars. Later in the day, vendors offer the famous Greek dishes gyros and souvlaki from mobile cards as midday snacks or a light meal. Some operate throughout the night for late-night revelers.

Greek street food goes back to ancient times when the first cities emerged in the sixth century BCE. Two modern street foods that can be traced to antiquity are the koulouri and the cheese pie. Many of these foods were rediscovered dur-ing the Byzantine period (330ă1453 CE) and continued to be made under Ottoman rule over parts of Greece, which lasted from the 15th century until Greece won its independence in 1821. In the Ottoman capital Istanbul (formerly Constantinople), there were many mobile street vendors, many of them Greeks and Armenians who specialized in a single item. Their wares included pilaf, fried liver, meatballs, roasted chickpeas, coffee, and salepi, a drink made by boiling orchid root that was sold in Athens as late as the 1930s.

Greece | 149 In the 19th and 20th centuries,

these street foods were brought by immigrants to Athens and the Greek Mainland. The tradition of grilling meat on a stick over coals is one of the most ancient cooking tech-niques; Greek souvlaki are a version of kebabs ( souvla means the stick on which meat was cooked). The climate and terrain favors breed-ing of goats and sheep over cattle , so beef dishes are uncommon. Nor-mally fish and seafood are not sold as street food.

The street-food business in Greece is dominated by men. Women play a minor role, largely because reg-ulations forbid the distribution of home-prepared food by street ven-dors. The only cooking technique allowed on the street is barbecuing (a traditional male occupation). The ingredients are supplied from

com-mercial companies. Thus, all the kouloria in Athens are supplied by three or four specialized bakeries, five factories supply pita bread to all parts of Greece, while special butcher shops prepare.

Major Street Foods