Lammas Road Trading Estate in E10 is one of those forgotten pieces of industrial detritus that litter the East-end like souvenirs from a previous economic era. It harks back to the days when someone could earn enough in a forty hour week to keep a family without supplementary benefits, a second income, a forty year mortgage, and credit cards to pay off the credit cards. Did they really exist?
You will not find a call centre anywhere near Lammas Road, neither will it ever be described as “Lammas Road Commercial Park”, but what you will find are those islands of entrepreneurial spirit that characterise the best efforts of modern Britain to earn a living as an independent spirit, free from the demands of unreasonable bosses, a cash business that fulfils the most basic of needs: the need for food. I am, of course, referring to the burger van.
There are three burger vans within walking distance of each other on the estate, but only the most centrally placed of them offers that culinary masterpiece: the hot pork sandwich, a favourite that transcends the fad diet of the moment.
If I’m hungry, and I frequently am, there is nothing more satisfying than one of Mike’s Lo Cal, hot pork sandwiches, complete with stuffing and apple sauce. He says the reason he calls it Lo Cal has nothing to do with the calorific value, but rather because it was made just around the corner, so it’s LoCal. The bread is sliced thick enough to expose the limitations of a single hinge jaw and the meat has that distinct, burger van flavour that says; “I’m extremely toxic, but anything this tasty has to be..”