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Street Food Index Introduction Louisville, KY Cedar Rapids Chicago Denmark Plano/Dallas/Fort Worth Richmond, VA Singapore Hawker Centres Rules for Hawker Centres Specific Experiences Trenton, NJ San Antonio, TX India New York City Nashville, TN Olympia, WA	Street Food: My Experiences I was hanging out on a stream the other night with a couple of friends, and the discussion turned to street food. I had a couple of stories that were relevant to the topic, and was told that given the breadth of my experience, I should write a series for the food blog I more or less have. Or create a new blog for street food discussion, or something. Three pages of notes later, here we are. I’m writing the first installment. This is going to be a sort of aimless wandering, telling of stories and relating of experiences type of thing, more of a travelogue than any sort of guide or recipe source. Along the way, maybe I can record some of the stuff I’ve done over the past forty years or so, as there’s been rather a lot. Let’s start with getting a clear definition of street food. For the purpose of this blog, I consider it any ready to eat item sold from a cart, card table, food truck, or other non-permanent structure. By preference, the food should be prepared on the spot, such as grilling over charcoal next to the card table. If the food item can be carried in one hand and eaten while walking, so much the better. Quality can be a serious concern. Some places have dealt with it in various ways, such as Singapore with its hawker centres, and others just leave people to figure it out on their own, like New York City. There’s ways to spot the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. I’ll talk more about guidelines and performance markers and such along the way. Some of it just comes from experience, and being willing to take the risk in the first place. I’m not presenting myself as any sort of authority. I don’t have the globe trotting experience of Anthony Bourdain. What I do have, however, is more experience than the average white American. I’m just a few weeks short of turning 63 at the time of this writing, and in that time, I have lived and worked in twelve cities across the United States, and spent time in Singapore, India, the U.K., and Denmark. This has given me a tremendous lot of opportunity to learn from the local environment, and learn I have. So I’m going to speak directly from my own personal experience here, and not try to generalize or assume that the same experience is still available. This is my Rihla, or at least a swing at a fair chunk of it. Much of what I remember about the places I have been is the food. I’ve got this organized right now in the order of the experiences. As a result, some of the entries will cover multiple cities. Some cities will require multiple entries. I’m working from a very rough outline and set of notes, and just sort of improvising as I go. This is raw me, reminiscing. On with the show.

Street Food Index

Street Food: My Experiences

I was hanging out on a stream the other night with a couple of friends, and the discussion turned to street food. I had a couple of stories that were relevant to the topic, and was told that given the breadth of my experience, I should write a series for the food blog I more or less have. Or create a new blog for street food discussion, or something.

Three pages of notes later, here we are. I’m writing the first installment. This is going to be a sort of aimless wandering, telling of stories and relating of experiences type of thing, more of a travelogue than any sort of guide or recipe source. Along the way, maybe I can record some of the stuff I’ve done over the past forty years or so, as there’s been rather a lot.

Let’s start with getting a clear definition of street food. For the purpose of this blog, I consider it any ready to eat item sold from a cart, card table, food truck, or other non-permanent structure. By preference, the food should be prepared on the spot, such as grilling over charcoal next to the card table. If the food item can be carried in one hand and eaten while walking, so much the better.

Quality can be a serious concern. Some places have dealt with it in various ways, such as Singapore with its hawker centres, and others just leave people to figure it out on their own, like New York City. There’s ways to spot the good stuff and avoid the bad stuff. I’ll talk more about guidelines and performance markers and such along the way. Some of it just comes from experience, and being willing to take the risk in the first place.

I’m not presenting myself as any sort of authority. I don’t have the globe trotting experience of Anthony Bourdain. What I do have, however, is more experience than the average white American. I’m just a few weeks short of turning 63 at the time of this writing, and in that time, I have lived and worked in twelve cities across the United States, and spent time in Singapore, India, the U.K., and Denmark. This has given me a tremendous lot of opportunity to learn from the local environment, and learn I have. So I’m going to speak directly from my own personal experience here, and not try to generalize or assume that the same experience is still available. This is my Rihla, or at least a swing at a fair chunk of it. Much of what I remember about the places I have been is the food.

I’ve got this organized right now in the order of the experiences. As a result, some of the entries will cover multiple cities. Some cities will require multiple entries. I’m working from a very rough outline and set of notes, and just sort of improvising as I go. This is raw me, reminiscing.

On with the show.