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Why I Usually Prefer Street Food to Restaurant Food

Wherever I go, when looking for lunch or dinner or sometimes even breakfast, I tend to veer toward the street.

I generally find street food almost always more interesting than restaurant food.

On the street, vendors usually specialize in just one thing: maybe it’s a kind of sausage, or sandwich, or other snack, but the menu for a street food vendor is usually quite limited. This focus on one or two items means the offering can be perfected in a way that’s more difficult for larger restaurants that offer lots of items on a big menu.

This process of perfecting the offered item is executed based on immediate customer feedback. A street vendor will notice how people are enjoying the food. If something is off, it can be tweaked and fixed. The unmediated feedback the street food vendor receives can be an opportunity to take input, make changes, and refine the offering until it’s as good as it can be. Interaction with street food vendors is always a little more “personalized” than is usually possible with restaurant chefs.

Street food is frequently offered by vendors in areas where lots of other vendors are offering exactly the same thing. This lack of originality – or “market differentiation” -- is actually a strength. Because street vendors can sample their competitor’s identical offerings, they can learn from each other and collectively move forward with better versions of the same thing, enabling their food to progress and get better in a way almost impossible for restaurant chefs to duplicate. With street food, you can actually do side-by-side tastings and determine best-in-class offerings.

With that, here are the three of the tastiest street eats I enjoyed over the past year.

Puchka in Calcutta, India.



Popular throughout northern India, puchka consists of crisply fried spheres that are crushed on top, lightly filled with potatoes, salt and tamarind pulp (sometimes also onions and/or chickpeas), and then drizzled with tamarind water. “Girls love puchka,” my friend Suvendli told me, “because it’s so sour.” I don’t know why females love it, but it did seem that puchka vendors had a lot of gals in line. Usually puchka come five or so to an order, and the vendor serves each singly, one at a time. The customer takes each piece as it’s dressed with tamarind water and then quickly pops it in the mouth before the liquid soaks through the shell. This requires the vendor to constantly attend to the customer and keep track of how many pieces they’ve had and, at times, their preferences. Price: about 10 cents for an order of five.

Falafel in Cairo, Egypt.



Using fava beans rather than chickpea flour (which is more common in the U.S.), these patties are best, like all fried food, when they’re coming right out of the hot oil. People start waiting for them at street stands well before the first batch comes out. Fried at high heat, the exterior becomes a matrix of lacy threads of fried legume, and the green interior smacks herbaceous with a light touch of garlic, each element distinct and not overwhelmed by the frying or each other. There is usually no lettuce or tomato, but I didn’t miss those condiments: this sandwich was so moist and flavorful that it hardly needed anything else. Price: about 17 cents each.

Boiled peanuts in Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina.



You won’t find this street food in many restaurants, and when I say “street” I mean highway, because that’s where you’ll find boiled peanut stands. If the idea of eating a hot, wet peanut sounds weird, well then you might be a northerner. Boiling these legumes does make them soft rather than crunchy, more like beans than nuts, but that’s not so weird, because peanuts are not actually nuts: they’re more like peas. I can see eating a pile of these on a hot summer day with a pitcher of cold beer.

What I liked most about eating boiled peanuts in Traveler’s Rest was chatting with Ken “The Peanut Man” Reeder. He told me about how his granddad used to boil the peanuts, and then his granddad died and he took over making the peanuts. But around then he got in a terrible car accident, and he told me how he lost his ability to walk and talk, and I could still detect a slight hitch in his voice. That was years ago, and since then Reeder has kept a kind of general store, where is daddy also works, and where he regularly boils up big pots of peanuts to serve his many customers.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

Great thoughts, David. You touch on a number of reasons why street food can often be more satisfying than restaurant food. And, if you subscribe to the notion that cuisine is the easiest access point into a given culture, then there's another reason streetfood's preferable to restaurant food: it takes less time and therefore, more of it can be consumed. More eating abroad = more cultural knowledge.

Having just returned from Paris, where I ate a few meals at Michelin-starred restaurants, there is a mild sense of frustration with how long some of these meals can take. Believe me when I say that I'm not complaining but as great as these meals can be, the time to knowledge ratio is fairly high. On the street, the opposite is generally true. Stop, grab a bite, learn a little something -- about the food, the people who prepare it and the people who consume it -- and move on to the next bites/lessons, wherever they may be.

=R=

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"Time to knowledge." What a perfectly concise way to express that idea. As I was writing this post, I was thinking about the recent dinner at Elizabeth, which took like 4+ hours, and I enjoyed a lot of the experience, and I learned some (mostly about pumpkin) but boy, at the end of the meal, my ass was tired and so was I.

Street food also provides access to a culture that is not always possible in "fancy" restaurants and especially in mid-tier places that seem, universally, to be serving a lot of the same stuff. On the street, you're eating what most people in that country actually eat regularly; in restaurants, especially finer ones, you're getting something else.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

The "tell me what you eat and I'll tell you what you are" concept has always intrigued me. I've learned more in my travels than from any book and have traveled to many of the souces that interest me. Street food is for the common man and often evocative of comfort. Unencumbered by bureaucracy, street stalls can respond or adapt quickly if they so choose. Food also has a way of being a great equalizer. A good example here in Chi (to me @ least) would be Mario's. I've always loved the fact that all walks of life end up waiting in line there. Mayor's next to gangbangers, college kids next to blue collars...

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"In pursuit of joys untasted"
from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata

Other reasons to go street:

* Some foods (e.g., falafel) benefit from high-traffic/high turnover

* Some foods (e.g., puchka) could pretty much be served only on the street

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

I'm not at all taking issue with your main argument but pani puri, another name for puchka, can be found in establishments on Devon, from snack shops like Annapurna to regular restaurants such as Viceroy of India. Granted, the experience won't be the same (and they won't be five for ten cents).

Edited to add the correct quote.

Sukhadia has excellent sev puri.

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"In pursuit of joys untasted"
from Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata

Sukhadia's also has assemble-your-own pani puri (so they don't get soggy). You can see the neon sign in their window.

For me, I suppose the answer largely depends on which country I'm in. But let me add in a few more reasons to prefer street food. When I sit down at a restaurant and look at a menu, I often find myself scrambling to find something that resonates with me at that moment. Often, I made the reservation when I didn't know what I would be in the mood to eat. But with street food, you know it when you see it - you're there, you see it, it appeals to you, you take it, and with minimal investment in time and money. Add in the fact that with street food, you can wander among a "tasting menu" of booths/stalls, finding exactly what you want, when you want it.

Also, authenticity. I find that in many countries, the very best meals are had in homes - be it for elaborate weekend family meals, or long lunches. Recipes handed down from generation to generation. Next best, probably at street stalls where the very demanding locals shop. But in many countries, so many of the restaurants serve foreigners more than locals so you don't necessarily get a true taste of authentic, local cuisine.

Now, in many countries I often prefer meals at restaurants - more civilized, more relaxed, more comfortable. Ultimately, I think it's a true shame to miss out on either experience, and sadly, I find that too many miss out on great street food.

Plus if you ever find yourself at an Indian wedding or other Indian celebration in the Chicagoland area, there's about a 50-50 shot they'll have pani puri (at least in my experience, with a sample of about 30-35 events.)

I personally don't have a very good argument for why I love street food, other than I'm a cheap son-of-a-bitch, for the most part, when it comes to food and I simply have a fascination about it for cultural reasons. I've always been more interested in "low-brow" everyday type foods. I like the unpredictability of it; I like the more rough-around-the-edges character of it. There might be some romance in it for me, but, in the end, if I'm eating street food, it means I'm out and about and exploring, and I find I derive more pleasure eating at the markets or streets for a couple bucks than I do in a proper restaurant. When I want to sit down and relax, I hit the bars.

I'll be going to India for three weeks in January for a wedding (part work, part pleasure), so I'm really looking forward to following some of Dave's tips. I've already been promised some Gujarati cooking lessons, so hopefully, I'll have something to share here, too.

Certainly true for me, too. For example, the high-end restaurant dining I have experienced in France is an integral part of the culture there; more so than in most any other place I've been.

=R=

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I just wanna live until I gotta die. I know I ain't perfect but God knows I try. --Todd Snider

Twitter: ronniesuburban

I haven't had the pleasure of frequenting places with a lot of street food culture. I lived in NYC, but at the time the street food was mainly overpriced pretzels, chestnuts in winter, and Sabrett hot dogs. Some kebabs appeared later in the decade, but they really, really frightened me. I ate a lot of the Sabrett dogs, but even with minimal time, the "knowledge to time" ratio still wasn't fantastic.
Italy: not much street food where I've been. (Fresh coconut slices in Venice, that's about it.)
In France, I enjoyed street crepes enormously, but not much beyond that.
London: let's not even discuss it.
For me, the great middle way of street vs. restaurant is the mom-and-pop storefront with a counter and 5 tables. Pilsen, Argyle, Devon, Little Italy, Chinatown(s), a London pub or sandwich shop, a Roman tratt., etc. There, it seems to me, you get it all. Terrific knowledge-to-time, unmediated feedback from customers to owner/preparers. And a table and chair.
Heaven.

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"Strange how potent cheap music is."

Yes, definitely, at street stands it seems more likely that you'll get to eat what the average person in that location is eating, and, binko, for sure, there's usually no better deal than a street eat (Gujarat and other west Indian states are definitely where I want to go next time -- I pretty much don't feel like I need to see Delhi and Calcutta again).

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

Oh, for sure. I'm kinda lopping some of those places in with my definition of "street food," as some locales simply do not have street food in the usual sense. For some reason, my food memories are much more strongly tied to these sorts of establishments. It probably is a sense of romanticism, but I remember that Thuringen rostbratwurst in Erfurt, the langos in Budapest, the knish in New York, the nutella crepe in Paris, the al pastor in Merida, the zapiekanki in Krakow, the shashlik in Samarkand, etc., far better than any actual restaurant meal I've had in those places. (With a couple exceptions.) Restaurant meals just don't "stick" to me the way street food (and similar) do.

Chicago, for example.

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Steve Z.
Photographer/Pseudojournalist

"The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook." - Julia Child

That feels accurate. I was at a memory seminar this weekend, and our instructor was talking about the old strategy of associating a person's name/face with a surreal mnemonic image; the instructor suggested that we put ourselves in the imaginary scene to reinforce our connection to it. I wonder if street food experiences stick in the memory because we're more "present" in the experience and less passive (as we more frequently are in restaurant dining).

Or maybe it's because street food is better so we remember it better.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

True, but I'd count stuff like Maxwell Street market and the food stalls there as "street food." Same with something like Mario's Lemonade or Jim's or all the Mexican street vendors you find around town. Heck, you can still find some hot dog carts stationed in front of bars in my neighborhood occasionally, too. But, yeah, they're not as plentiful and ubiquitous as in many other places.

It's also worth distinguishing between street food that's merely sold on the street vs. street food that is really prepared on the street. The NYC knish, let's face it, is a mass produced product that's heated and sold. In the far east and India, you're talking about real street cooking that reflects who the seller is. I suppose that's also the case here with tamales, to an extent.

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"Strange how potent cheap music is."

It's a fair distinction, but not one I care about too much. Even the pre-made foods are interesting to me. I don't think the bratwurst vendor in Erfurt or currywurst vendor in Berlin is making their own sausages, but I still do find almost as much satisfaction in it as foods that are literally prepared road-side. Obviously, I find the idiosyncratic foods more interesting, but the general idea of what makes up street food in a certain culture as a whole is what I'm generally interested in.

I think the US, with its car culture, has nearly obliterated the idea of "street food" in the process of creating "road food."

One of the most memorable meals I've had in the US was a pulled pork sandwich at "Hot Sauce Charlie's" -- a tin shack surrounded by smoke and flies, halfway down Lookout Mountain from Rock City (near Chattanooga TN). You wouldn't walk there, there's no place to eat there, it's designed for eat on the go. It's not street food, but it's the platonic ideal of road food.

It's the experience, the find, the knowledge that a stiff wind might remove it from the map entirely, that the cart vendor might not be on the same corner ever again, that makes street food so much fun. Franchised fast food has perverted this by providing the same experience everywhere.

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What is patriotism, but the love of good things we ate in our childhood?
-- Lin Yutang

The car may recieve some blame, but I think wealth also has something to do with it, too. In countries with relatively high per capita wealth (e.g., US, Canada, much of Europe), there's not as much of a street food presence as there is in countries with relatively low per capita wealth (e.g., India, Mexico, Egypt).

The reasons that street food thrives in countries with relatively low wealth are obvious: people may not have means to cook at home, and street food is cheap and tasty. Plus, in warm countries (which tend to be less wealthy), cooking at home is a less attractive activity.

Southeast Asia is an interesting case. There's lots of street food, now, but as it gains in wealth, we may see street food diminish.

Singapore, a wealthy place, has moved many street food vendors into controlled market areas, more like "food courts" than streets. It seems like this might be the model for other Southeast Asian countries that, as they get wealthier, may tend to experience reductions in street food vendors unless governments make the effort to preserve them by curating them (while simultaneously removing them from the streets).

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

This sounds like Chicago with the chef-driven food trucks. There have been food trucks, Vee-vees & Three J's come immediately to mind, in the city forever, but the "foodie" food trucks with cupcakes,or mac & cheese, or whatever needed government assistance.

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Ava-"If you get down and out, just get in the kitchen and bake a cake."- Jean Strickland

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A friend who is very well-travelled says "Ok, see, I was to Next: Thailand and I've been to actual Thailand, and the food at Next was tasty and the food in Thailand sucked." She says they had thought they were just picking bad places, and then the stood in lines with the local people (thinking if there was a line it had to be good) and it wasn't, it was just cheaper.

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Maybe your friend just doesn't like aspects of authentic Thai food or didn't eat at the right places, because I was absolutely blown away by the street food in both Bangkok and Chiang Mai, and found the "Thai" food at Next to be pretty, but quite timid and not authentic.

Me, too, blown away, but ingredients at Next were of a vastly higher quality with a cost that was also much, much higher than anything you'd buy on the street in Bangkok. But I'm not sure it's even an appropriate comparison. I believe Next is doing their "interpretation" of Thai, etc., and not really trying to replicate, so authenticity is maybe not even an issue.

It's also very hard to generalize about the quality of street food of any country as it is so various and differs so much seasonally and geographically even within the same country.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

Singapore, wealthy? Well I guess that depends on your perspective!

Actually I don't even recall ever seeing street food vendors on the streets of Singapore. Hawker centers have been around since my early childhood days in the 1980s. And by street food vendors I mean those that you see on the streets of Bangkok, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.

Singapore, wealthy? Some feel it could be the wealthiest country in the world: http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2012/0 ... st-people/

It's all relative, though, right?

The "food courts" I referred to are the hawker centers where the government of Singapore systematically relocated street vendors, BC. (Before Charlotte, )

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

We went to Singapore after KL. Compared to the incredibly rich street food scene in KL, the Singapore hawker courts were tame and, indeed, a bit lame. I'd go back to KL in a NY heartbeat, just to eat the street food.

IIRC, in Bangkok the Ambassador Hotel had a *huge* food 'court' with a hundered or so stalls. You bought script and then went crazy. Awfully good eats there.

Geo

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We were staying like across the street from the Ambassador, but I heard "food court" and lost interest. I've heard from many that it's spectacular, so I regret not going, but I did have some very good stuff on the actual street.

In Chennai, India, too, the huge Spencer's mall turned out to have very good food (I had a channa masala that cost about a buck and was excellent). At first, I shunned it, but then I went and found it a fine place where, as my new friend Trini told me, "the common man shops so it's probably going to be good." I like that attitude.

Books and covers issue here.

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“We all have to stand before the kitchen gods.” Chef Jacob Sahaya Kumar Aruni

I'm guessing this may be partly due to Singapore's obsession with cleanliness.