What makes something “Street” food?

[Santamarina]

Street food is anything you’d find on a food cart. Food trucks are just a restaurant on wheels; doesn’t make the cut. I will allow food served out of the trunk of a car or on a small table next to a car.

It is becoming a trendy label to apply to food…it’s a lame trend. Just like when all the breweries started slapping an IPA label on everything because they were popular. I once ordered a brown ale and had the waitress tell me it was an IPA. It’s out of control.

So quick recap…if the entire operation (food, cart, table, accessories, etc) can’t fit in the bed of a small truck it’s not street food!

[Carolyn]

I agree with you and @PGH_RAM
Street food is from a cart, from a booth or on a table. It should be cheap and served on a stick, in a wrapper or a paper bowl to make it easy to walk around with it.

[PGH_RAM]

I'll second what Santamarina wrote. I'll add this: it should be inexpensive.

• $3 lengua tacos outside of Las Palmas Mexican grocery store? Streetfood.
• $5 tteokbokki in chili sauce with blood sausage at 3AM on the streets of Seoul from an old lady with a propane ring and a griddle? Streetfood.
• $15 teriyaki salmon fusion tacos from the $50,000 food truck with a Square POS tablet and a suggested 25% tip built in? Not streetfood.

This is one of my "grumpy old man" topics.

[texastweeter]

What about a squirrel shot off a barbed wire fence running down a red dirt road that you cook up in the field...is that street food?

[Carolyn]

The man-mountain I flagged down that was pulling a trailer full of metal he was getting off the curbs, showed me the road kill he was going to eat for supper that night. As I looked up at this 6' 3' man with road kill on his trailer, I was suddenly regretting letting him into my house to take the tv I no longer wanted.

Road-kill for supper? Now, that is 'street food.'

[PGH_RAM]

texastweeter Hm. Good point. I'm thinking that there may have to be an actual "street", too.
:-D

[FireMan]

Simple: street food, street is the tip off
home cookin, home is the tip off
road pizza, road & flatness of pizza is the tip off.
There ya have it.

[troymeister]

When it's late at night after coming out of the bar and you buy Tamales or Tacos from a lady selling them from a cart. Then you drop it on the street before you had your first bite. (Because you've been drinking) Then you pick it up, brush it off and eat it. (5 second rule) Voila...Street Food.

[PGH_RAM]

To this day I have no idea what they were actually made from, as delicious as they were...

I feel you on that one. I visited Seoul a number of years back for a history teacher workshop hosted by one of the local universities. Some of us attendees took to hanging out with the grad students who were staffing the thing. Lots of late nights at bars that would have been shut down here in the States for safety violations. Lots of small restaurants and street food at 3AM. I told the grad students I only had one rule about food: Don't tell me what it is in English until I've tried it and liked it. It worked well, I ate like a king for two solid weeks.