Just started the prep for our Boston Seafood Chowder as part of our menu at the Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market @TWBCFrmrsMkt tomorrow – Saturday from 0900 – 1400. Our Chowder is packed with fish and other goodies including sustainable and tasty pollock, salmon, smoked haddock, mussels, bacon and cream. Yum Yum.
Some of the fish in our chowder. Salmon and Pollock
Great excitement as the Deli Truck appears at the Tunbridge Wells Farmers Market this Saturday for the first time. We have a special gourmet menu for the occasion with a selection of our big hits including our homemade Salt Beef on Rye, our famous 8 hour smoked pulled pork, BBQ ribs with potato salad and our renowned Cajun Sea bass Sandwich. Miri will be making her outrageous chocolate brownies as well. We’ll be parked up on Civic Way, just outside the Town Hall from 9 am through to 2 pm this Saturday. Hope to see you.
Just back from a gastro-tour of France. This time by bike (Horatio the Harley) as part of a much needed break after such a busy and fun summer, cooking great food for fantastic clients. So – an early start for Portsmouth to catch the fast Sea Cat crossing to Cherbourg – followed by 10 days of tasting, drinking, buying fresh and unusual produce, cooking and visiting out of the way small local restaurants including little known French truck stops. I predict these humble establishments will be the next big thing in France – try the one on the N12 – between Ernee and Fougeres if you ever get a chance. But all good things come to an end – after much laughter and sharing of food with French and English friends and hard work in the garden of one friend – I had a two day ride back to Calais via Rouen. Horatio behaved and all in all it was a great trip with the added bonus of the discovery of wonderful new food ideas for the Deli Truck – including what could be a winter favourite – pork loin, roasted-off and finely sliced – slices then dunked in steaming hot onion-chassuer sauce and piled high in a buttered crispy crunchy baguette.
A full service for he Harley before departure. Typical HD. Its takes 3 different oil changes.
Leaving at dawn for Portsmouth and the fast sea cat to Cherbourg
Street food – French Style – a truck at he Ernee Fete serves Toulouse Sausages cooked over charcoal. We’ll be doing this next summer on the the Deli Truck. A lot more of our food will be cooked directly over flaming charcoal. Can’t beat the flavour
A stop of at the Harley Davidson shop in Le Mans for a coffee and chat and some oil. Wonderful welcome.
On the boat back to Blighty after a fabo ten days in France.
We’re resting up today after an very very busy night at “tarte” restaurant in Brasted. A huge success with well over 100 customers satisfied by our food and the ministrations of the wonderful “tarte” wait staff. A great evening. we set up outside the restaurant on the High Street and first orders started at 6.30pm.
The Deli Truck set up outside “tarte” in Brasted about an hour before the crowds turned up all at the same time. Crazy first hour of service.
The Deli Truck at the end of service -a very successful first night at Taste
We had started preparing for our one night only appearance at tarte 4 days before the evening – as we rested our pork shoulders (for our pulled pork) on our secret Texas rub for 48 hours before they went into our smoker for ten hours over oak and apple woods.
Our special rub is used to flavour the pork for 48 hours before cooking . Made up of paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, cumin, oregano and a few other things…
The burgers we made came from one large piece of Black Angus top side.
We cut the topside from a 10 kilo lump into a five 2 kilo strips so we can hang them in our commercial fridge in the Deli truck. This dries the meat out and ages it for a couple more days. The dryer meat means a much better texture to the burger – it holds together better – and great flavour.
The topside has been minced and formed into largish 7oz burgers. Thie went well with our other menu items for our night at “tarte” in Brasted – We served our famous spicy pulled pork sandwich and our cajun blackened Sea Bass.
OUr menu board on the truck for the night.
This saturday coming we are teaming up with “tarte” restaurant to bring the taste and flavours of the Deli Truck to the public. This is a special one night only affair starting at 1800 and ending when everybody is full. The Deli Truck will be parked outside the restaurant, opposite the village green, for service from 6.00 PM on the evening of the 16th of August. We have created a classic Deli Truck menu for the evening including our famous pure beef bacon and cheese burger, our spicy Cajun blackened Sea Bass sandwich served with our home made potato salad and finally our very successful 12 hour smoked pulled pork sandwich.
The Deli Truck at Camden Market in London
As many of you knowThe Deli Truck tries very hard to be a responsible and eco minded food truck. For example all our disposables – that’s takeaway plates, cutlery and cups – are all bio-degradable and compostable. A number of clients have asked me what a compostable plate or cup means. So to clear up any ambiguity – the plates and cups we buy, if shredded and put into a compost heap, will have disappeared within 3 months. They are made of either vegetable starch for cellulose starch.
We try to be a responsible with our food sourcing. For the event at taste this Saturday – our burger meat comes from one 11.5 kilo piece of beef from the topside. ThIs will make around 65 x 6oz burgers. We cut the beef into manageable pieces that will fit through our grinder. When the beef is ground we form it into 6oz patties and add absolutely nothing to the meat at all. A good burger with good meat should be treated like a steak, add nothing to mixture – with only salt and pepper on the outside added during cooking.
The same for our pulled pork – we get many compliments about this dish mainly because we take the time to do it traditionally. There are no shortcuts. we roll whole bone-in shoulders of pork in our special rub texas rub. 24 hours later we smoke it for up to 12 hours over oak and cherry wood. We then “pull” it apart and serve it with our spicy rich BBQ sauce, also home made to our own recipe. Our pork is locally sourced from Batchelors the butcher in Riverhead.
Deli Truck pulled pork – 3 large shoulders of pork covered in our special texas rub for 24 hours before hitting the smoker for up to 12 hours.
Hope you can join us on Saturday night – if the restaurant is booked out we will still be able to have some of the fastest American Style food in the South East – as will also be doing takeaways.
The organisers of this very stylish birthday party wanted a relaxed atmosphere in the garden and they got just that. With outdoor lounges and coverings for a shill-out area, a fully staffed wet-bar and the Deli Truck – the feeling was informal, chic, elegant and fun. And the guests certainly had fun. Guests started dropping in from 4.00 PM until 9.00 PM, with mosts staying on to drink and talk the night away until well into the small hours. We served a hot menu selected by the hostess from the truck with an accompanying buffet of salads and our home made lemonade – later we served freshly brewed coffee and tea.
The menu was chosen in consultation with the hostess (it was her husbands 50th birthday) and turned out to be a real winner. We ended up cooking our spectacular burger which everyone seems to have heard about and always wants. We accompanied this with our 12 hour smoked pulled pork which was a huge hit and chicken breast stuffed with chorizo and parmesan cheese, then poached in chicken broth, white wine and butter – served with a dollop of home made pesto on top. More details on the Menu are listed below.
A big thanks to the most gracious and delightful hosts for their many kind words and support. We had a ball.
I’ll leave the final words to the hostess who emailed us 48 hours after the party. She said “Thank you for such wonderful food and ambience at our Garden Party – wow what a wonderful day. Everyone was blown away by the Deli Truck and I am sure you must have run out of your info sheets. Thank you also for organising such thoughtful and helpful assistants – it meant we could both relax and enjoy the company of our guests.”
Still recipe testing for our public appearance @tarteofbrasted. Have upped the flavour in our cajun rub – with more chilli and a little more cumin. Tried it tonight on sea bass, with our own organic salad and a fabo valpolicella from Italy. Great summer supper in the country.
Cajun Sea bass from the Deli Truck
Loved this wine
One of our more unusual requests. An American client has asked me to feed his creative team for lunch tomorrow. It’s a surprise for their hard work. He specified smoked turkey cooked on a rotisserie accompanied by mac & Cheese, our special coleslaw, biscuits and gravy. Finished with key lime pie and pecan pie. A great American menu. But the turkey is certainly the king. We used charcoal for the fire and Oak and Apple wood for the smoke. It Looks fantastic.
Giving the beloved Deli Truck its usual power clean this morning after yesterdays garden party for the staff of a very generous boss. Most of the guests came down from London and they went crazy over the salt beef. Unusual venue for us, as the hosts had a very large back garden that couldn’t be accessed by the truck – and they had a very small and steeply climbing front drive. (see photo below) So we parked the truck right outside their front door – with guests ordering their food and walking through the house to the lovely tree lined and very spacious back garden. A great result.
The Menu for our guests most of which you saw being made in my last post
Truck on a difficult slopping site – but it’s true the deli truck can go any where you want.
“tarte” of Brasted and the Deli Truck are bringing American style Gourmet Street Food to Brasted as a special summer celebration for one night only. “tarte” is well known for introducing innovative new menus and guest cooks to its Brasted eatery just opposite the village green.
On Saturday the 16th of August you will be able to enjoy the renowned New York Style Deli food from the Deli Truck, while tarte will provide sides, desserts, wines and beers.
All the food on the Deli Truck is made in house, even the BBQ and Burger Sauces are made by us.
No Additives, No preservatives, No Chemicals. All our meat is sourced from Batchelors the Butchers in Sevenoaks and is guaranteed to be from the UK. Table reservations are recommended and take-aways are also available. Contact tarte on 01959 565446
The Deli Truck has been hailed by one London critic as producing – “some of the best modern American street food in the UK”. So enjoy one of our hand ground double cheese and double bacon burgers – or our authentic 8 hour smoked pulled pork sandwich or our spicy cajun blackened fish sandwich.
tarte – is opposite the Village Green on the High Street in Brasted (TN16 1JE) next door to the White Hart Pub. You’ll see the Deli Truck parked outside on the A25. Service will get underway at 06:30pm
All the disposables on the Deli Truck – that includes cups, plates, knives forks and spoons are all biodegradable at least and in many cases are fully compostable as well. our plates are made of sugar starch and will compost in just 6 weeks our cold drink cups are made of plant starch and are fully compostable and biodegradable. But we don’t rest on our laurels – we are forever striving to bring you better quality food, with less additives and funny chemicals. We have just started our own gardens for suppling organic lettuce for our burgers and salads – and we hope this is just a start.
The Deli Truck 