Our street food spotlight this month comes from Street Feast marketing man and professional eater, Adam Layton, who seeks out a taste of Italy in his hunt for a cheeky dinner.
Something special happens when you put the adjective cheeky in front of a meal. When a burger becomes a cheeky burger, and a curry becomes a cheeky curry, it transcends the status of mere food; it becomes an expression of freedom and friendship. A breakaway from the constraints of modern life. An occasion for old friendships to be strengthened and new ones to be forged. It’s over cheeky meals that the 21st century neo-family is formed, ditching formality in favour of togetherness. At the cheeky dinner table, all are equal. All are welcome.
Traditionally, cheeky eating has been more about the company than the quality of the food – that’s how gut-ruining curries and deeply average spicy chicken have come to dominate the experience. But change is afoot, and Dinerama’s Cheeky Italian are right at the front of it, bringing quality ingredients, personality, and a chef’s passion to the proceedings.
“Cheeky Italian is all about casual dining,” says founder Teejay Asciak. “It’s about having restaurant-quality Italian food, but without the formality of that setting.” Asciak creates clever street food menus that wouldn’t look out of place at one of Nonnas’ legendary feed-ups. For him, Italian family meals translate perfectly into the 21st-century eating-with-friends experience; they’re noisy, hearty and as much about who’s around the table as what’s on it.
Asciak’s menu takes the cornerstones of Italian cooking – a few delicious ingredients, minimal fuss, rich punchy flavours – and uses them as a template to create something new. “The whole point was to see Italian food from a different angle,” Asciak says. “To stay away from your typical pizza-pasta stereotypes, and make dishes from around the world with a little Italian twist.”
It’s an approach that’s produced some magical moments. “We’ve done a take on the Canadian dish poutine. The traditional Canadian version is fries with gravy and cheese curds. We’ve taken it up a level, topping our crispy fries with slow-cooked ragu beef shins, really creamy cheese and béchamel sauce, and pickled red onions.”
The result, though controversial to both Canadian and Italian traditionalists, is pure joy. It’s the kind of solid, soulful dish that can set a night on the right tracks or bring it to a brilliant conclusion.
Asciak has worked in restaurants for most of his life. Rather than focus on one core dish, as many street food traders do, he uses Cheeky Italian as a platform for experimentation and invention.
“Lots of people said to us, ‘just do one thing’,” he explains, “but we wanted to do more.” This summer, their ’70s Citroen HY van knocked out four fantastic dishes. As well as the poutine, there were crisp calamari rings, an awesome crab mac and cheese and sizzling scottadito lamb ribs, named after the Italian word for burned fingers – you can’t wait for them to cool down to eat them, such is their power.
Seek out Cheeky Italian at Dinerama in Shoreditch every Friday and Saturday night or Brockley Market every Saturday. No longer will you shudder at the mention of a ‘cheeky dinner’.
