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Street Food

Eating on the Go

Eating on the run came long before the current American fascination with mobile catering. For millennia, vendors in densely populated cities hawked their ready-to-eat food and beverages from portable carts and booths temporarily parked in public places—like streets—with easy public access.

Street food generally filled the bellies of those people too poor to own their own hearths. Excavations of ancient Greek ruins and Pompeii record the early beginnings of European street food, including the foods they ate and the utensils they used. The Greeks enjoyed small fried fish on the go; the Pompeiians consumed chickpea soup with bread and grain paste. In Transylvania, popular street foods includes gingerbread-nuts, cream and corn, and bacon. Vendors also fried meat on ceramic vessels filled with hot coals. Paris street food vendors invented the french fries. English hawkers sold fruit, tripe, pea soup, pea pods in butter, prawns, jellied eels, roasted chestnuts, meat pies, and sausages.

The Chinese enjoyed street food, too, with wealthy citizens deploying servants to purchase and carry home tasty meals. Just because a dish had humble origins as a food meant for the indigent did not mean it lacked flavor. The Chinese carried ramen to Japan, where the Japanese adopted it as a favorite fast food.

In Egypt, people purchased street food and ate it picnic style: lamb kebabs, rice, and fritters. Turkish vendors sold spiced meat roasted on spits. Turkey was the first country to legislate and standardize street food in 1502.

Hopping across an ocean or two, adventurous gastronomes could also encounter street food in the New World. Vendors selling beverages and nearly 50 kinds of tamales populated Aztec marketplaces. Ingredients included turkey, rabbit, gopher, frog, fish, fruit, eggs, and even insects. Hawkers sold oysters, roasted ears of corn, fruit, and sweets in the streets of colonial America. The streets of New Orleans offered fruit, cakes, nuts, coffee, biscuits, and pralines from portable carts and stalls operated by women of African descent.

From the chuck wagons on cattle drives to Oscar Mayer’s iconic weinermobile to the ice cream truck blaring “Turkey in the Straw,” mobile food lacked cohesion until 2010, when the Southern California Mobile Food Vendors Association formed. That was also the year that the National Restaurant Association (founded in 1919) dedicated 1,500 square feet of exhibit space to food truck exhibits at its annual convention, The Great Food Truck Race debuted on television, the U.S. government added a page of advice for starting one’s own street food venture, restaurant review website Zagat began providing reviews of food trucks, and the City of Los Angeles began rating food trucks the same as brick-and-mortar restaurants.

Street food not only began as a source of income for the urban poor, it remains a source of income for unskilled labor, especially in depressed economies or in cities experiencing rapid population growth. Today, street food has grown into an upscale dining trend with vendors selling samples of exotic cuisine and featuring gourmet offerings.

By Karen M. Smith