In more than 20 visits to India, Colleen Taylor Sen has fallen ill from street food twice. In both cases, she blames herself.
“I violated the number one rule of eating street food, which is it has to be hot and freshly made,” said Taylor Sen, who has written and edited several books about street food and Indian cuisine. “The minute anything is sitting around, you’re in trouble.”
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Wherever you go around the world, you’ll probably find the street food that locals consume for fast and affordable sustenance. Vendors work from stands, stalls, carts and food trucks, setting up at bus stops, markets, plazas and subway stations.
Some street food dishes have taken on almost mythical proportions: hot dogs in New York and Iceland, tacos in Mexico, merguez in Morocco, chaat in Mumbai, crepes in Paris. Singapore’s hawker centers and Taiwan’s night markets have become cultural attractions on par with museums and monuments.
Ansel Mullins, co-founder of Culinary Backstreets, a global food tour company, said the portable meals fit into the “rhythm of daily life.” They also provide travelers with an opportunity to experience “a deeply local world that they may never come close to otherwise,” he said by email.
Street food can also be a risky proposition. Some stomachs are not built for certain spices, ingredients or recipes. The food may also be contaminated.
“To find places where the locals usually eat comes with some risks,” said Alvin Lee, a director at the Institute for Food Safety and Health at Illinois Institute of Technology, “and the risk is always food poisoning.”
To avoid spending your whole trip in the bathroom, you can still indulge in the sidewalk buffet. You just need to exercise your street food smarts.
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Take a food tour or follow a local
Because of the roving nature of street food vendors, reviews can be difficult to find for some businesses, especially if they lack signage and a permanent address.
Travelers who want to skip the research should consider a guided street food tour or tagging along with a local who knows the scene well.
Jacada Travel, a luxury tour operator, arranges tasting tours led by local chefs or food bloggers, often using traditional transportation such as tuk-tuks (Bangkok) or mopeds (Vietnam). In Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the company works with a young guide who has created morning and evening itineraries featuring vendors that guests “might not feel comfortable trying alone,” said Keith Jarman, senior Asia Pacific travel designer at Jacada.
Fernando Rodriguez, Intrepid Travel’s general manager in Lima, Peru, takes visitors to Alameda Chabuca Granda, a riverside promenade behind the Government Palace. He plies them with a trio of specialties: anticuchos (beef heart skewers); picarones, doughnuts made of sweet potato; and rice pudding with purple corn syrup.
Alameda Chabuca Granda is regulated by the municipal government, a level of oversight found in street food hubs around the world, including areas in Brazil, India, Japan and Singapore, whose National Environment Agency manages 123 markets and hawker centers.
In theory, the vendors will follow best practices for preparing, cooking, storing and handling food. To earn a food operations license or permit, they may have received training in food service operations and passed a site inspection. In practice, however, enforcement could be lax or challenging due to a business’s mobility, so you still need to be discerning.
In destinations with regulations, check the cart or stall for a current license. Some systems bestow letter grades. Lee said he would never eat below a B.
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Red flags for street food vendors
According to the World Health Organization, 1 in 10 people fall ill from contaminated food, and 420,000 people die annually from foodborne illnesses. To protect consumers, the global organization created safety guidelines, including Five Keys to Safer Food.
Savvy street food eaters, such as Mullins and Taylor Sen, will look for vendors with crowds and heavy turnover. The fast pace means the food is flying out of the kitchen and not languishing on a counter, exposed to the elements.
Taylor Sen said she will only eat street food prepared before her. If a vendor tries to sell her a premade item, she will request that it is made-to-order.
“Anything that’s sitting around, you could get sick, as I did,” she said.
Rodriguez will run a cleanliness check on a vendor’s uniform and cooking station. Two red flags: If the person touches the money and the food (to avoid this, look for stands with contactless payment), or repeatedly rinses dishes in a germy container of water.
Lee pays attention to the overall environment. Buzzing flies, piles of garage and inadequate hand-washing facilities are dealbreakers. If the setting is unappetizing, he will take a pass.
“I’ve been to places where people are eating next to a bathroom or a really dirty, polluted canal,” Lee said. “Do I really want to take my chances?”
Some cooking techniques are safer than others, Lee said. Grilling, stir fry, frying and boiling are a yes, as long as the cooking temperature is high. Blanching and flash fry are questionable.
Communal sauces that contain acids, salt, sugar or oil, which act as preservatives, are often okay to consume. If the condiment comes in a lidded container with a serving spoon, skip it. A previous guest may have double dipped.
Abby Snyder, an associate professor of food science at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, said that you cannot trust diners who identify a specific food vendor or venue as the source of their gastrointestinal woes. She said it’s often difficult to pinpoint the exact cause of food poisoning.
“People may have anecdotes of observing clearly nonfood-safe things, but many times, if you contract a case of foodborne illness, you don’t really know where it came from,” Snyder said. “It’s different than when you’re at home and in control of the process.”
Snyder said foodborne illnesses often stem from undercooking, storing food outside of temperature control for extended periods or cross-contamination.
Diners might be able to notice an undercooked dish – the meat is pink or oozing red juices, the seafood is translucent, the protein’s center is cold. However, without a thermometer, determining whether the food was cooked at a high enough heat to eradicate harmful bacteria or parasites is more difficult to assess.
Refrigeration is equally important. Raw ingredients and precooked items should be properly chilled, to prevent bacteria from growing. Prepared hot foods kept in the “temperature danger zone” – 40 to 140 degrees – enhances food safety risk, too. As for cross-contamination, a cook who does not wash utensils or cutting boards used to prepare raw meat can befoul an entire meal.
“Even if you watch them do the food preparations, you may not see details of the process, like the cook temperature or all of the places where cross-contamination could happen or what they do for sanitation,” Snyder said. “So it’s very difficult for consumers to be able to control the food safety.”
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Where water is safe to drink
Depending on the destination, avoid raw food, which may have been rinsed with contaminated water or contains parasites, bacteria or other toxic microorganisms.
Rodriguez won’t touch one of Peru’s specialties, ceviche, because he does not know the source or quality of the uncooked seafood.
If Lee orders a sandwich on the street, he will avoid the lettuce, tomato or other raw veggies, which may contain harmful pesticides or were rinsed with tainted water. He will ease up on this rule in destinations with strict water regulations, such as Canada, Australia and most of the European Union.
“I would not worry about the water supply unless there are specific signs that make me uncomfortable, like cloudy water,” he said of these safer spots.
For juices, choose fruits with a peel, and make sure the vendor is wearing gloves when cutting the produce. The juice should be pure, not diluted with tap water or ice, both of which could be contaminated. Precut fruit should be refrigerated.
Rodriguez leans toward dishes made with minimal ingredients. Too many items requiring different temperatures and cooking techniques can increase the chances of getting sick. One of this favorite snacks is boiled corn, which sits in anise seed-infused hot water for hours and is served in its protective husk. The customer, not the vendor, peels the meal.
“If I find boiled corn in a tiny town in the middle of the Andes, I would eat it,” he said.
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