FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

Sushi Burritos Are the Best Festival Food, Don't @ Me

Yes, the Japanese-Mexican hybrid may be an insult to the fine craft of the sushi chef but omg they are SO GOOD.
Phoebe Hurst
London, GB

Welcome to #NotAnAd, where we post enthusiastically and without reservation about things we’re obsessed with from the world of food.

When you first hear about Happy Maki, you will decide that you hate it. It is a street food business based in Brighton, founded by a woman who spent her gap year on a pearl farm in French Polynesia and took The End of The Line very, very seriously. The branding is: unapologetic vegan. Happy Maki’s aim, we are told on its appropriately wholesome website, is to make food that is good for the oceans and great for the taste buds.

Advertisement

But you must stop right there. However upside-down-face-emoji Happy Maki sounds on paper, you are not allowed to hate it. Neither am I—no one is, because Happy Maki has created literally the best festival food of all time. The vegan sushi burrito.

Of course, Happy Maki didn’t invent the sushi burrito—that was a chef in San Francisco or Starbucks, depending on who you believe. But its food truck, which parks up at summer music festivals across the UK and serves tofu-stuffed sushi rolls the size of small house cats, has reimagined the Japanese-Mexican hybrid as a Festival Food™. Happy Maki sushi burritos are substantial yet hand-sized; filled with vegetables and slow-release carbs, yet just as tasty as anything the cheese toastie stand sells.

An angel descended from the heavens. Photo courtesy Happy Maki/Facebook.

I have done some very serious research on burritos with East Asian fillings and figured out what makes Happy Maki’s product so superior. Unlike LA’s carefully constructed “phorrito”, or the sushi burrito with delicate cucumber strips and sprinklings of spring onion I tried at a food market in Newcastle recently, the Happy Maki sushi burrito is Absolutely. Stuffed. Full.

It is hench with hoisin, heaving at the edges of its nori jacket with densely packed rice and thick slices of red pepper and meaty sun-dried tomatoes and teriyaki-soaked tofu. It could not hold any more avocado if it tried. The Happy Maki sushi burrito wipes lashings of soy sauce from its brow and looks at all the sad sushi platters and limp burritos of the world and laughs, Do you even roll, bro?

Advertisement

Of the four burritos Happy Maki sells—all of which include some combination of avocado, fresh vegetable, and tofu—my favourite is the Fully Loaded, which features “crispy chicken” tofu, sweet potato wedges, avo, cucumber, pepper, and sesame seeds. I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that it must contain seven of your recommended five-a-day. And they’re not stingy with the wasabi either!! No pathetic Itsu-sized packets here, Happy Maki’s staff add as much or as little of the horseradish condiment as you desire, smearing it right in there with all the rice and fillings. Which makes so much more sense than having to dip your constructed sushi roll into a little pot of wasabi, and inevitably spilling something on yourself. (Every Japanese restaurant in the world should probably take note and start making their sushi like this from now on too.)

But the best thing about the sushi burrito—aside from how smug you feel enjoying its generous fillings when your friend buys one of those disappointing little tubs of mac and cheese—is that after you have finished, you will not want to eat for the rest of the day. In normal life, this would be a horrifying downside but it’s pretty useful at a festival—a place where it is impossible to find any food for under £8 and also who wants to stop watching Childish Gambino to go and buy chips? Eat a Happy Maki sushi burrito and you're set for the next six hours. Or you can do as I did at a festival earlier this summer, and eat half your sushi burrito, then store the rest in your jacket pocket to sneak bites of during the quiet songs in The National’s set.

I mean…… Photo courtesy Happy Maki/Facebook.

Happy Maki’s sushi burrito is almost certainly a grave insult to the Japanese sushi masters, given that it contains no fish and cannot be eaten in one bite. My friend basically did try to do this once, and she threw up. Everyone was worried that she had taken a dodgy pill or contracted some terrible festival lurgy until she re-emerged from her tent half an hour later, explaining that she was simply so excited about the sushi burrito that she ate it too quickly, immediately regretted it, and had to have a lie down. The Happy Maki sushi burrito will do this to you.

I’ve been thinking lately that I might be over festivals—the faff of having to travel to a remote field near Andover and put up a tent; the enforced glitter; the comedowns; the creeping realisation that, if I'm really honest with myself, I would probably have a more enjoyable time on a long weekend in the Lake District or getting stuck into a book about post-War Germany; the toilets. But one thing sure to lure me back every time is the possibility of a visit to the Happy Maki truck.

The sushi burrito truly is the best headliner of all.