Vegan review: Street Food DelHi

Street Food DelHi, a family run business who happen to be just round the corner from me (convenient) have recently launched their delivery service. Previously their focus was street food at events and festivals but, of course, Covid meant they had to pivot. You can find the Indian food delivery service on Just Eat and Deliveroo with a number of clearly labelled vegan options to choose from. When they got in touch via Instagram to ask if I’d like to try their food, I was happy to give it a go…

The team at Street Food DelHi dropped off some of their most popular vegan dishes for us to try. First, we opened up the vegan pakora wrap. It looks like a giant burrito and at £7.50 I thought it seemed very good value – a whole filling meal in one neatly rolled package. The wrap was really well filled, but somehow it all managed to stay tucked inside the thick naan bread. Vegan naan! So hard to get hold of and almost unheard of from a takeaway service, so that was a real bonus. The pakora were delicious, with a nice texture and a mild flavour which was complimented by sweet and spicy chilli sauce. There was a little salad in there which had stayed fresh, and all in all this was a very enjoyable experience. If I order from Street Food DelHi in future, I’d be tempted to order an extra one of these to enjoy cold the next day for lunch too.

Next on our plate was the Tarka Moong Daal. I’ve tried a lot of daal, and they can often be the mild, slightly more bland option – but that wasn’t the case at all here. The lentils were creamy, coconutty, but also had a real kick to them and a proper balance of spice I’ve not often found when I’ve ordered Indian food for delivery recently. I really enjoyed it scooped up with the naan bread. I was also impressed how nicely the dish was presented (for something that comes in plastic tupperware, anyway). It somehow arrived looking quite like a restaurant dish, with dried chillis on top.

They also have a mixed vegetable curry on offer, described as using ‘mixed seasonal vegetables’. For us, that meant whole roasted baby aubergines and potato. While Jamie’s not so keen, aubergine is one of my favourite vegetables (fruit). As with the other dishes, it was a feast for the eyes. The aubergines were so well cooked, creamy and melt in the mouth but they’d kept their shape and didn’t turn to mush on the plate. Flavours from the slightly sweet tomato sauce had been absorbed into the nicely salted potato, which were also cooked just right. The curry seemed like it was really good quality, using nice and fresh ingredients and not drowning anything in oil. Served alongside it was fluffy white rice, with lots of cumin seeds running through it, topped with dried onion. Even alone it had a lot of flavour, and took each mouthful of curry to another level.

As a little bonus, they shared a couple of pots of their house made hummus for us to try, which you can now find in their pakora wrap. It made a few appearances on my Instagram feed as I enjoyed it over a couple of days with roasted veggies at lunchtime. It was beautifully smooth and creamy, and flavoured so deliciously with cumin. Who else thinks they should add this as a separate item to their menu?!

All in all we really enjoyed the meal, it had a lot of punchy flavours and it felt like a change from the sometimes samey Indian takeaways you can pick up from other restaurants around my area. The family clearly really care about the quality of food they put out and it shows in the eating. It’s a tricky time for small businesses like this one and I’m wishing them all the best!

This meal was complimentary; the review is an honest account of the food we were sent.