Notorious Street Food van a ‘dream come true’ for Derry dad

Caolan is a hotel manager in the Crescent Link Premier Inn and also runs a hugely successful street food van with his fiancé Chloe Robb. Notorious Street Food is located at Northside Shopping Centre. The ultimate family business, their five-year-old son Alex ‘works’ there too and he even earns a wage. Caolan says he had always dreamt of being a chef and running his own kitchen but he would never be able to reach his dream without Chloe’s support.

Caolan said: “Since I was around 13 years old, I used to lay in bed and night and dream that I would have this. I live my life through law of attraction and I have always manifested this. Throughout my whole life, everything has worked out well and helped me get to where I am now. I started off working in McDonald’s, which taught me how to work at speed, camaraderie in a kitchen and other skills. I then moved to a butchers, which meant I could start working on my meat skills, learning about different types of meats, quality cuts and how to break down animals. The Premier Inn taught me how to run a business and deal with customers and teams. Every step of my life, I knew I was taking the right step to reach my goals. It’s all paning out the way I manifested it.

“Chloe is my partner in life and in business. We’re to get married next year and I couldn’t do what I do without her. Chloe works while Alex is in school and, after she collects him from school, she comes over to help with the van when she can. She completely runs our home as well because I work from 6.30am to around 9pm every day. She’s amazing. This is my dream but, without Chloe and the support of our family, I could never have achieved it. Running a business is not easy and it’s not supposed to be. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. Chloe knows it’s hard work and she works so hard too. The business is very family orientated and family focused. Without every cog of our family working there, it wouldn’t work.”

Not only are Notorious Street Food family orientated, but they also believe in providing fresh, local food at a good price. But what exactly is street food?

“It’s compact dishes that you can eat on the go,” said Caolan. “It’s not fancy restaurants but it’s good quality produce presented to you and you’re just blown away by the favours and the complexity of the dish. That rapport of people standing there watching you cook and the chef being able to tell you about the dish you’re about to eat - you can’t get that in a restaurant. Our chef, Chris Moran, is the person who does all our cooking. I do most of the preparations and the recipes and Chris does the rest. You need experienced hands that know what they’re doing. Our food is not like a chippy, there’s a lot of complexities in it.

“People don’t have a disposable income now so we cut the cost out of a restaurant. We’re selling restaurant quality food out of a van, which means people can eat good quality, fresh, local produce any day of the week in the comfort of their own homes. Come winter, people will have less money again to spend so we’re making it easy for people to enjoy high quality food for less. I love being able to meet customers and explain what Notorious Street Food is about. I can tell people exactly where we get our produce from, what the aims of the business is and I think that’s why we have so many repeat customers. We’re honest, we’re good craic, people love it and what you see is what you get. The people of Derry love to see their own getting on well, too. I spent a lot of money recently getting set up for an event in Ebrington which was then cancelled because of the awful rain. I put a post on our social media saying that we would have to open Monday and Tuesday because we had so much stock and the people of Derry rallied around and we sold out in no time. I didn’t expect anything less, Derry people are just great.”

So, what’s next for Caolan and Notorious Street Food?

“Expansion in to the business,” said Caolan. “We will start looking into more vans so we can start attending weddings and events. Now, when events come up, we have to pull away from our locals to go to them. I don’t like doing that but, unfortunately, those are the steps you have to take to get the brand out there. It’s always a calculated decision over what you’re going to do and when you’re going to do it. We could go to an event on a Saturday but that’s when I have my repeat customers and I don’t want to let them down. The only way to do it is to expand into getting another van. We have the NI Takeaway Awards coming up which gives people a chance to vote for who’s best. We’re in for Best Street Food of the Year, Best Catering of the Year and Best Newcomer of the Year. That’s very exciting.

“I just want to thank the locals in the area for supporting us and following us and for Derry people being Derry people. I’m really looking forward to the next step and to see what’s coming next.”
Notorious Street Food are located at Northside Shopping Centre and are open Wednesday and Thursday, 12pm to 7pm; Friday and Saturday, 12pm-8pm; and Sunday, 1pm-6pm. They can also be found on Facebook by searching Notorious Street Food.