Michelin-starred chef Jameson Stocks on his new street food venture in Chichester

The new business, dubbed Just Street Food, marks a slight departure from the celebrity chef’s background in haute cuisine – he trained under Marco Pierre White at London’s famous Oak Room – but, Jameson says, preserves a traditional emphasis on small menus, top-quality ingredients and superlative cooking.

"The street food angle really interested me,” he explained. “I’m a Michelin-starred chef, so on paper this is totally out of my realm. I thought that, if I can bring that Michelin standard to a street food restaurant, it would be really cool – and that’s what I’ve tried to do here. We’re calling it slow-cooked fast-food. It takes us sixteen hours to cook the meat, and its all freshly sourced, but once it’s done, it’s very quick to serve.”

Serving pulled pork, beef brisket and more out of Chichester’s newly opened indoor food hall The Ghost at the Feast, Jameson said that part of the fun of the new venture has been coming to grips with a fresh set of culinary skills.

“It’s been quite an eye-opener for me, because obviously it’s a completely new concept, and it’s been hard-working getting it off the ground. You can see it on my hands, I’ve burned myself quite a few times. But I think what I’ve enjoyed the most is meeting the other vendors in here. For these guys, this is their day-in-day-out, they’ve done this for years. So for me to muscle in on the street food vibe, it’s been a challenge, and I like a challenge.”

In order to preserve that Michelin-quality, Jameson says the street food eatery is prioritising quality over quantity, with a small, regularly-rotating menu that places a premium on best-in-class ingredients.

"We want to change the menu regularly. A lot of places have the same menu, and maybe they’ll change it every few months – but I’m going to change mine every week. We’ll keep the brisket on but everything else will change. We’re not buying in shredded cabbage and carrots, we’re shredding it ourselves. We’re making the oils ourselves, we’re pickling everything ourselves. We’re making all the brines, all the rubs for the meats, we’re smoking it ourselves onsite. We’re making everything from scratch.”

Jameson has lived in Chichester for the last two years, and said he was convinced to open Just Street Food when his children told him they’d like to walk past and get something to eat on the way home from school. That’s been one of the great joys of the venture so far but the other, he added, was taking on fresh-faced young chefs and teaching them the tools of the trade.

"I really believe in hiring locally. When I was approached about this, I thought ‘if I can employ five or six local people and teach them and help them and guide them, and maybe they can come to Cape Town to my other restaurants, or something like that, that’s a great thing to do’ and it’s a great addition to Chichester. There are loads of good restaurants here already, but this offers people something completely different.”