Doggy Bag: How S.F.'s Streets Look from London

rhondawinter/Flickr

Brits get a taste of Sexy Soup Lady.

Urchin report: London's Financial Times gave readers a taste of San Francisco Saturday. London restaurateur Jacob Kennedy begins at Boulevard and finds his way (via chef de cuisine Ravi Kapur) to Nopa for the best pizza Kennedy says he's had outside of Rome, and service "of a standard we can only dream of in Britain." But it's reporter Tracey Taylor's sidebar about S.F. street food that captured the most pungent local flavor (including a quote from yours truly). Taylor offers a competent summary (with the odd quaint spelling) of last year's cart-food milestones ― like this (after the jump):

Now that the Bay Area has got its teeth into kerb-side treats, it is making sure food carts are here to stay. Three separate street-food festivals were launched in 2009. "Street Food" took place in San Francisco itself; "Eat Real" was held in Jack London Square, a foodie destination near the port of Oakland; and the wine country jumped on the bandwagon with the World Street Food conference in Napa Valley. The festivals lent a sheen of legitimacy to street food but a good percentage of the cart vendors are unlicensed, which means there is an element of subterfuge to how they operate. Many of them use social media, posting information about their new sandwich fillings and current locations on Twitter and Facebook. It is a strategy that seems to have appealed to tech-savvy Bay Area residents, many of whom relish a whiff of the underground.