CAMPhotography by Jonathan Knowles
Trailer of Life
Cheesy chips, quesadillas and, of course, burgers. For more than 30 years, the Trailer – or Van – of Life has been a Market Square staple, delivering vital sustenance at the end of many a late-night student adventure. So what’s its secret?
Cheesy chips, quesadillas and, of course, burgers. For more than 30 years, the Trailer – or Van – of Life has been a Market Square staple, delivering vital sustenance at the end of many a late-night student adventure. So what’s its secret?
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14 July 2026
Under the startlingly fluorescent light of the luminous blue burger van, the owner Daniel turns to add one more customer’s name to the bottom of the list. The hungry and slightly inebriated clientele in the post-midnight queue, including Isaiah Magdael (Fitzwilliam 2020), hold their breath. How will he spell it this time?
"Sometimes there were ‘z’s, sometimes there were missing ‘i’s or missing ‘a’s – my favourite one was probably ‘IZAIA’,”
But tonight? As Daniel adds the final ‘h’ to the perfectly spelt ‘Isaiah’, a loud cheer rises from the assembled throng. “It had been a bit of a running joke, but it was so exciting when he got it right, especially as it was just before my graduation.”
This, of course, is no ordinary burger van. This is the Trailer of Life, a true Cambridge institution.
The very first time Isaiah had come across the van, Covid restrictions had just eased up.
The nightclubs had tentatively reopened, and hordes of sweaty second years – determined to reclaim the freshers’ week they never had – were spilling out of MASH (previously Fez).
Hungry after a night of dancing, they stumbled towards Market Square, where they caught sight of the blue vision of goodness.
“There was a decent queue – we waited about five minutes, then got some good grub for the walk home,” recalls Magdael.
“Fitz is not a central College to say the least, so we normally needed something to motivate us to get back up the hill.”
The grub in question was standard post-club fare: chunky chips and a regular cheeseburger with lots of condiments.
Not exactly molecular gastronomy. And yet it signified something important: a reintroduction to that hazy late-night space, full of possibility, in which anything might happen and you might get talking to anyone.
Magdael became a regular customer, getting to know the owner well and paying a visit almost every time he went clubbing. During the warmer months, he and his friends would often stop at Castle Mound on the way back home.
They’d sit at the top and stargaze for a while, pondering the wonders of the cosmos as they scarfed down their chips. Other times they’d simply mill around in Market Square.
“The Van of Life was great for reconvening with the people I went out with and talking about what had happened during the night,” says Magdael.
Of course, he’s far from being the only one to feel this way. Founded in 1992, the Trailer of Life (colloquially known as the Van of Life) has provided the backdrop to many a late-night misadventure.
Indeed, for many alumni it has attained an almost mythic status, cemented by its apparent rivalry with the ‘Van of Death’ (officially called Uncle Frank’s) on the other side of Market Square.
“Where you went for your post-night out snacks was quite a tribal thing,” recalls Claire Tomlinson (Clare 2002).
“I remember being out with a friend from home who wanted to go to the other van, and I was like: ‘What are you doing? That’s the Van of Death. You don’t go there.’”
Tomlinson isn’t sure where this judgement came from, just that it was entrenched in College lore.
You could visit Gardenia (‘Gardies’) if you wanted to get your photo on the wall of fame. The Trailer of Life was renowned for its cheesy chips (“the fact they melted the cheese made it that bit more special,” she says).
The Van of Death was simply the ‘other’, and sometimes it was arbitrary – your social group determined your allegiance.
“My friend remembers all his friends going to Gardies,” says Tomlinson. “He used to secretly go to the Van of Life, and then sneak round the corner and meet everyone at Gardies. I feel bad about the Van of Death. They were perfectly fine; it was just this label that they got given.”
Ersel Korusoy (Trinity 1993) matriculated shortly after the vans first opened. Although he did visit the Trailer of Life, which he describes as a “nice, homely chippy”, his own loyalties lay with the Van of Death.
“It had a Turkish proprietor named Omar, and I’m Turkish Cypriot, so it was a familiar face in a fairly isolated place,” says Korusoy.
“There weren’t many non-English people in Cambridge at that time. The food was obviously quite different to what you’d get in your average chip shop. Some of it was familiar to me, and some of it was really quite bizarre – lamb and chicken shish kebabs, kidney and liver, spicy potatoes, doner burgers, pickled eggs, and even intestines stuffed with things and put on the charcoal.”
Aside from his cultural connection with Omar, Korusoy felt drawn to the dark romance of the Van of Death.
“I used to be really into fantasy fiction novels, which tended to involve people going off on adventures,” he says.
“I suppose walking through the market square, by the light of the moon, felt like a bit of an adventure. You’d reach this oasis of light in the middle of all this darkness between the buildings, and there was Omar and his van.”
Where you went was quite tribal. I remember being out with a friend from home who wanted to go to the other van, and I was like: ‘What are you doing? That’s the Van of Death. You don’t go there’
Photography by Jonathan Knowles
Back in the 90s, the rivalry between the vans was no laughing matter
Ersel maintains the Van of Death nickname was a derogatory term coined by the Van of Life people, who were attempting to conduct a kind of PR sabotage.
However, this tension seems to have eased up over the decades. By the noughties, says Tomlinson, the life/death duality was perceived as being “a bit comical”.
And by the 2020s, it was all but gone. “I didn’t really get a sense of that rivalry at all,” says Magdael. Of course, many of the vans’ customers would have been somewhat worse for wear.
Tomlinson remembers going to formal hall, then to the College bar, and then to Cindies, finally stopping at the Trailer of Life to soak up the booze. “We’d do a slow amble back to College and the food was gone by the time I reached my room,” she said.
“It either got eaten or dropped on the floor – one of the two.”
Pollyanna Hopkins (St John’s 2019) has a similar memory.
She remarks that since you weren’t technically allowed to bring food into College, you had the choice between smuggling it in under your jacket or sitting on the wall outside and finishing it off.
“My regular order would have been the quesadilla – chicken, cheese and pepper folded in wraps and fried, with chilli oil and garlic oil. It was always amazing,” she recalls.
There was another important subset of customers, however – students working late into the night. Ersel and his girlfriend would often pause their studies around midnight and wander towards the market square in their pyjamas.
Tomlinson too would sometimes head there once she’d finished writing for the day. “We’d go and get cheesy chips as a reward for slogging through another thousand words,” she says.
“The food wasn’t just for when you’d had a lot of alcohol.” So how did this humble kebab van become such an essential part of the Cambridge experience? It’s hardly the kind of thing a tourist would associate with the city – something to see alongside the gothic towers and dreaming spires.
And yet for students, the Trailer of Life is often just as meaningful and memorable as those more Harry Potter-coded elements.
The most obvious reason is that Cambridge is a small place, with relatively few late-night eating options.
But there’s also the calibre of the people who worked there.
“It always felt like they were enjoying their job, even if it was 3am with a crowd of drunk students,” says Hopkins.
Then there’s the Trailer of Life name, a marketing masterstroke. As Tomlinson puts it: “You’ve got this brightly lit up beacon of hope at the end of a night out.”
Hopkins was recently back in Cambridge for her MA celebrations, and was heartened to see a healthy queue outside the Van of Life.
“I live and work in London now and the food culture after a night out is very different,” she says.
“You don’t get the same familiarity with the people you’re seeing and the food you’re eating, because it’s quite a transient place.”
Tomlinson is also London based now, and isn’t necessarily tempted to revisit the life-giving trailer.
“Would I go all the way back to Cambridge just for those cheesy chips? Probably not,” she says.
Korusoy says he hasn’t been to the Van of Death in years, but that next time he’s up in Cambridge, he’ll take a look.
Magdael stopped at the Van of Life the year after he graduated, and found that it evoked a certain melancholy.
“By that point Daniel had left,” he says.
“I don’t know the streets as well as I used to. I think it would be a fruitless endeavour to try to recapture that time in my life – it’s fun to remember, but I won’t be able to get that specific experience back.”
For many alumni, cheesy chips may plunge us right back into the sights and sounds of our student days.
And more so than the quality of the food or the quality of the service, that’s arguably what makes the Trailer of Life so special: its inseparability from a very particular stage of life.
Ode to 4am
Ode to 4am
Shall I compare thee to a cheesy chip?
Thou art more greasy and delectable:
Rough wines do shake the boozing BNOCs of May,
And Caesarian Sunday hath all too short a date;
Sometime too merrily the fresher doth wassail,
And often is their gold complexion dimm’d;
And every fare from fair sometime declines,
By chance or evening’s raging course untrimm’d;
So long as there are bops where we dance free,
So long live chips, and chips give life to thee.
Apologies to the Bard, love Cam xoxoxo
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