Welcome to The Street Food Project.

Firstly I would like to say thank you for visiting my page The Street Food Project (TSFP). My name is John and I have been a chef for around 20 years. From fine dining to hotels, restaurants, a castle and even executive head chef at a football club. More recently I set up a street food business where we got through to the finals of the British Street Food awards.

I get asked where my passion for food comes from, to be honest it comes from growing up in a home with lots of home cooked meals. My mum is a great cook and my nan was a professional cook in schools and also an amazing home baker. Annoyingly food is my first thought of the day and normally my last thought too. I have an allotment, I fish, I love to bake and also have a family farm in Argentina. Food to me is everything, my kitchen is the heart of the home and a space where we laugh, argue, converse and generally chat about life. The exciting thing is that food is constantly evolving, it is like fashion in that it has trends that change though seasons and influences. Even after all my years of cooking I’m still learning and pushing myself,

So what is The Street Food Project ? Basically just after Covid I had just re-opened a coffee shop in a community centre. The local council asked me to cater for some activities for children, who receive free school meals, this was part of the HAF project. I started with two projects and a few months later I was catering for 15 projects. Even though feeding the children a healthy and nutritious meal was very positive it was apparent that these children were not eating well at home and they could not cook for themselves. I was asked to run a cookery workshop for some teens in the local area and this quickly escalated to councils, housing associations, local college and even the NHS asking me to run cookery programs for them.

Currently I work 5 days a week at my street food business and then on Mondays & Tuesdays I travel across the south coast running sessions. I have recently finished a 6 month course with some amazing teens in Southampton and I am in the middle of 2 courses for Itchen College and a 4 month course with more teens in Bordon, East Hampshire.

To be honest I wish I had started doing this years ago. The reason for this blog/website is to build a catalogue of all the recipes that I have been teaching so the participants have a point of reference if they forget anything that I have thought them. At my age I find things like YouTube and social media a bit awkward, I prefer face to face interaction but I will do my best to get all the recipes on a YouTube channel too. Any tips and advice would be most welcomed.

Whether you have stumbled across this page or if you attended one of my classes or courses thank you for reading my ramblings. I am here to help so please feel free to ask any questions and please subscribe to keep up to date with new recipes and events.

A huge thanks again, Chef John