What is Street Food?

Street food is a loosely coined expression to describe snacks or whole meals prepared and sold from a non-permanent structure, mainly for immediate consumption. Trucks or carts, small booths in public places, or floating markets are the most common venues.

Different from fast food, street food is perceived to be based on local, seasonal, fresh, and minimally processed ingredients. Many street-food stands represent the local cuisine with its most common ingredients. Typically prepared by independent vendors who specialize in very few dishes, street food is seen as a true and authentic reflection of a culture and its cuisine. There might be some truth to that: A successful native vendor selling chicken and beef satays from his mobile grill in Kuala Lumpur has had his whole career and life to perfect and personalize it. On the other hand, there are many street-food favorites with little relation to the culinary classics of the locale. Introduced by the media, travelers, or migrants, these specialties have secured a definite place in the hearts and stomachs of the people. A popular street food in the Puebla region of Mexico is the taco Árabe, or “Arab-style taco,” filled with meat sliced from an upright rotisserie that most would recognize as Gyros or shawarma. To this day a reflection of Middle Eastern cooking, it has over time given in to local interpretations. The traditional mutton has changed to pork, some vendors use tortillas instead of the traditional pita bread, and the yogurt or tahini sauce has been replaced with regional salsas. A comparable version, known as taco al pastor, made its way into Mexico City in the early 1970s and is now found all over Mexico.