This summer, we went on our first street food adventure with an indoor set-up as part of the Moretti Gran Tour in Leeds. The venue was fantastic, our pulled pork pasta dish went down a storm and we really learned a lot. We want Tigellae to work as a mobile restaurant whatever setting we’re in, being able to create Italian street food for all kinds of UK events.
With this in mind, we recently decided to invest in an alternative set-up, one which will be brilliant both indoors and outdoors and one which can be dressed up and fitted out however we like.
Ladies and gentlemen, behold…the world’s first ever foldable food truck!!!
We realise that, at first glance, it looks a lot like a gazebo, but it is much more than that! It means we can bring you the same Tigellae experience in more places than ever before. Not only that, it’s really easy to put up and take down and it all fits into these 3 bags!
Next, we needed some menu boards which were free-standing and would look at home in our brand new (and very tall) mobile kitchen! We already had two long boards which we took to the Moretti Gran Tour with us, but to make them stand out a little more and fit the new space we’d be working in we asked Laura’s dad to help us modify them so they stood up vertically. Here he is modelling one of them!
Yesterday our foldable Vanstaurant went to its very first event in our home town. This year we’ve enjoyed a regular collaboration with our local pub, the Harewood Arms in Broadbottom, meaning that many of our friends and neighbours have been able to try our Italian street food on a regular basis. This lead to us being booked to provide the food for this year’s Incredibly Crafty Christmas Market, a lovely craft fair which takes place each November in the local community centre.
For this event we created a lunchtime menu for people to enjoy as they started their Christmas shopping! This included the Bari focaccia with cherry tomatoes and Italian olives and Lecce focaccia with onions and oregano which have been popular throughout the year.
This was also the perfect event for our Arancellae – our take on Sicilian arancini and one of our favourite new recipes which has made its debut recently. Here they are!
On the day we served up Arancellae with four different flavours: Tomato and mozzarella, tuna, olives and capers, spicy salami, and spinach and Grana Padano cheese. We had sold out of our Sicilian rice balls of wonder by the end of the day!
Finally, we had a tiramisu’ menu for the very first time!!! The Torino tiramisu is made with Italian espresso coffee and dark chocolate, the Vignola tiramisu is filled with black, syrupy cherries from Modena, and our brand new Amalfi tiramisu’ is infused with Limoncello and topped with white chocolate stars.
Thank you to everyone who braved the cold to come to the event and especially those who stayed outside and chatted with us for a bit. It was really, really cold but we had some beautiful sunshine!
We’re just coming to the end of our first full season of street food and it’s gone wonderfully well, but next season we want to be even better. We’re sure that the foldable Vanstaurant will help us to do just that!
Ciao, a presto!