London: Street Food

A soft-yolked egg wrapped in seasoned sausage meat, breadcrumbed and fried or baked. Scotchtails at Borough Market has specialised in runny-yolk versions since 2012, using flavoured sausage mixes such as black pudding, chorizo and haggis. Fortnum & Mason claims to have invented the original hard-boiled version in 1738 as a coach-travel snack.

Slow-brined beef brisket, hand-carved and piled into a hinged boiled bagel with English mustard and pickled gherkin. The dish came to London with Ashkenazi Jewish migrants to the East End in the late 19th century. Beigel Bake on Brick Lane has served it 24 hours a day since 1974, routinely drawing queues past midnight.

Steamed white milk buns folded around braised pork belly, fried chicken or daikon, in a Taiwanese street-food format popularised in London by sibling-founded BAO. The first permanent BAO opened on Lexington Street in Soho in 2015 after a cult run at Netil Market. Branches in Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Borough and King's Cross followed.

Deep-fried chickpea balls rolled into flatbread with hummus, salad, pickles and tahini or chilli sauce. The dish entered London through Middle Eastern diaspora communities from the 1960s onwards. Hoxton Beach Falafel, founded in 2002, supplies stalls at Broadway Market and Goodge Street. Mr Falafel at Shepherd's Bush Market draws queues for Palestinian-style versions.

Pasta tossed tableside inside a hollowed wheel of aged Parmigiano or Pecorino Romano, coating each strand in melted cheese as the starch scrapes the rind. The theatrical Italian service became a London market-food fixture in the mid-2010s and now runs daily at Borough Market, Seven Dials Market and Camden Market, priced between £10 and £14.

Chicken marinated in Scotch bonnet, allspice, thyme and other aromatics, then slow-cooked over pimento wood or charcoal until smoky and tender. The dish travelled from Jamaica to London with the Windrush generation from the late 1940s. Notting Hill Carnival remains its largest annual stage, drawing over two million attendees each August bank holiday weekend.

Seasoned lamb or mixed meat stacked on a vertical rotisserie, sliced into flatbread or pide with salad, pickles and chilli or garlic sauce. The format arrived with Turkish and Kurdish Cypriot migration from the 1960s onwards. Green Lanes in Haringey and Kingsland Road in Dalston hold the city's densest concentration of ocakbaşı grill houses.