Street Food Championships interview

We speak to 2021 finalist Alex Rodgers from Neon Cactus in Leeds about his innovative Double pork ‘Findus’ crispy pancakes...

What is your background?
I am the senior chef at Akito Limited. We own four bars in Leeds, three of them serve food, though we don’t class those as restaurants. It’s just small dishes.

As part of my role I’m in charge of Neon Cactus, which is the outlet that got me into the Street Food Championships final. I’m there to keep an eye on the kitchen, write the menus, do the costings and come up with the specials.

How did you come to enter?
I got an e-mail from our HR and socials manager asking me to enter. So I entered two dishes, an Indian chicken burger for a different outlet and then I sent in my take on a Findus pancake for Neon. The latter was the one that got the most attention and got me into the final.

Sounds great, how did you come up with it?
It's basically – I don’t know if you remember Findus Crispy Pancakes? – I was thinking outside the box a bit and I wanted to do something unique. I always like to think a bit differently, I don’t like doing traditional foods. I try and mix it up with my take on things the best I can.

I did a chipotle pulled pork pancake. I marinated the pork overnight, put it in the slow cooker for eight hours, then pulled it. I made my own four-inch corn tortilla, filled them with the pork, put some cheese in, then crimped them with a fork.

Then I, instead of using panco breadcrumbs like your traditional Findus pancakes are, I used a Mexican pig fat. What you do is, you boil some pig skin in bicarbonate of soda and vinegar then deep fry it and it puffs up really, really well. That added a lot more texture and gave it the saltiness it needed to go with the pulled pork. I used a sweet chipotle-style marinade, so it needed the saltiness.

It just worked really well. We ran it as a special prior to entering the competition and we sold out in a day, so we were rushing around and trying to get them back on as quickly as possible. They are a heavy prep job, though, so we put them on as and when we get the time. They always go down really well.

Have you competed before?
Funnily enough, this was my first competition. I went into it with an open mind, not knowing what to expect but ready for anything. It was really good. I think I used all my time wisely. I saw some other chefs trying to get it all done quickly, whereas I took a step back and I tried to take my time.

Because it was my first competition, I wanted to do as well as I could. It was a lot of fun and something to look forward to this year. I am going to try and get into as many competitions as possible and keep pushing my name forward, as well as the company.

So you’d enter the Street Food Championships again?
Yes, definitely, even if I did it on my own. It’s definitely something that I’d love to keep doing. I’m just about to enter your National Burger Awards [organised by our sister publication Dine Out]. It’s something I really enjoy and I want to keep doing, because it’s fun and it gets your and your company’s name out there.

Also, you get to meet other chefs and set up potential future collaborations, with the other chefs or the sponsor companies like Quorn and Frank’s sauces. It’s good to meet up and get networking. I really enjoyed myself.

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