rainbo, 1st August

Rainbo only very recently made my List after having read the Evening Standard’s article last week on the best 20 Gourmet Food Trucks in London. It was the only one in the list that I liked the sound of and hadn’t been to yet. So it went on the List and by fortuitous circumstance, came to be parked right by King’s Cross Station this week. Of course I had to go.

Rainbo do Asian street food – mostly gyoza, which are Japan’s answer to Chinese dumplings, and also called pot stickers. I love them so was excited that a new street food place was purveying them. They also offer miso soup, edamame and something they call crunchy salad. You can get six gyoza, some of the aforementioned salad and some edamame for £5.60 and that is what I did.

In one fell swoop the girl behind the counter scooped up six dumplings off the grill and popped them in the box, threading through some chopsticks. I sat on a stall with the box warming my lap as I set about eating. 

On the right of the picture is the crunchy salad. This is basically coleslaw – red cabbage, carrots and onion, but without the mayonnaise. Instead, they have ingeniously liberally sprinkled caramelised peanuts all over it. This may totally spoil the health benefits you get by eating salad, but it is totally worth it. It tastes fantastic. Really. Way more impressive than it sounds. The little pot is soy sauce, half of which I used with my dumplings and half of which I poured over the salad. In the middle are edamame beans. They’re covered in sea salt and fairly self-explanatory. 

On the right are the six plump dumplings, their bases nicely crisp and golden from the grill. They only had a choice between pork and tofu (though sometimes they have chicken and coriander) and I went for the pork and pickled ginger (like you needed to be told). Let me just say that they have made it into the inner circle of street food vendors that I will from now on have to pretend aren’t at Eat Street in order to avoid giving in to temptation. In other words, I’m saying they were good. I think I ate three with soy sauce and then three unadulterated. Yum. And what with all the veggie stuff, on top of being full, I felt unwarrantedly healthy, which is always satisfying. 

In case you're wondering, my other Street Food temptresses (I like to think of them as female - 'temptress' sounds more dangerous than 'tempter'), are Yum Bun, the Ribman, Big Apple Hot Dogs, Banhmi11 and Homeslice.