Street food: From bunny chow to bagels

24 August 2016 - 09:10 By Sylvia McKeown

"Spicy, fragrant, slow-cooked mutton or beef curry crammed in a quarter of a freshly baked, hollowed-out white loaf of bread and topped with sweet-and-sour pickles and a blob of yoghurt ..." Without doubt, bunny chow is the street-food love of pop-up shop curator, chef and writer Khanya Mzongwana's life. It is what she will be most excited to eat at the third annual Street Food Festival in Maboneng this weekend.Mzongwana, with blogger Thithi Nteta, entrepreneur Mokgadi Itsweng and chef Zolitha Magengelele, will speak at the festival. She will talkabout her personal food history and heritage, examining the relationships that South Africans have with food and serving up lessons passed down by her grandmother."My late gran taught us that food is for sharing and that, when you share, no matter how little you think you have, you'll always have enough." The festival's food market promises everything from doughnut pizzas, gatsbys, noodles and jerk chicken to boerie rolls. Plus you can buy tickets to chef Jade de Waal's experimental Indian dinner or celebrate peppers at Magengelele's chef's table.There will also be a spot of competitive eating on show.According to Yasir Salem, US championship-winning competitive eater, the secret to rapid gobbling is learning how to breathe between bites - a helpful tip for this year's eating contest, The Samosa Showdown.Salem suggests that once you find your breathing rhythm (he only breathes once between every three or four hot dogs) you should stick to it or else you may find yourself out of breath, losing valuable seconds. The rest of us will simply watch in awe as contestants shovel samosas down their throats. Either way, breathing will help.Another attraction involves a "build your own bagel" station and a cereal bar, both rich in history and high on the trendiness scale. Although some, like Mzongwana, may be excited to "put everything on [my] bagel and throw that cereal bar in the trash where it belongs", others may revel in the opportunity to eat cereal after 10.30am - with none of the stigma that comes with it.Either way, if you choose to snap up the lox and cream-cheese bagel - an ode to the Austrian baker who in 1683 created a roll in the shape of his stirrup to honour his king - or yearn to grab some milk and dig into the moulded corn byproduct that John Kellogg stumbled upon by mistake in 1894, or want to have your bagel and eat your flakes too, the festival has you covered.The Street Food Festival takes place on Sunday at The Cosmopolitan in Maboneng, Johannesburg. For more information visit www.quicket.co.za..

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