The Evolving Nature of Street Food?

by Jeffrey Ian Ross, Ph,D.

Over the past two decades, interest in street food has grown.

Articles, books, podcasts, YouTube channels, and television shows have all celebrated the wide variety of dishes that fall under this type of cuisine.

When the term street food is mentioned, it typically conjures images of vendors cooking and serving local specialties in makeshift tents, kiosks, food carts, or other precarious structures in urban settings. In some cities, street food is seen as an integral part of urban and street culture.

Take almost any Saturday in New York City: one or more streets are blocked off, and numerous vendors line the streets, selling everything from Chinese dumplings, to Italian pizza, to Thai noodles to Mexican tacos. Depending on the weather and other competing factors, customers line up at these businesses to sample the diverse culinary options.

In many respects, street food has been, or continues to be part of the unique cultural and social fabric of many neighborhoods and cities around the world.

The Dilution of Street Food?

Historically, street food consisted of flavorful, traditional dishes prepared using local ingredients and cooking techniques. It was accessible both in terms of physical proximity and affordability, often quickly made and served to working people.

Street food was also connected to a meal’s origins, context, and who prepares it.

But today due to a confluence of factors, even some traditional high-end bricks and mortar restaurants, and fast-food chains operating in suburban shopping malls and airport terminals use the term street food in their description of the food they serve and the branding of their businesses.

In short, what was once a humble, localized type of food is now prepared, marketed, sold to, and eaten by consumers far removed from the streets.

One step further. The term street food now seems to be tossed around so carelessly that almost any food served in these settings is labeled street food, rendering the term and what it stands for increasingly meaningless.

Does this widened application of the expression undermine the authenticity of what street food truly is?

What Defines Street Food?

The current use of the term raises other important questions. For example, if so-called street food is cooked in one’s home, does it cease to be street food? Conversely, if a Michelin-starred restaurant temporarily serves one or more dishes at a street festival, does that make it street food?

Now consider these relatively recent developments:

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted restaurant owners to build makeshift outdoor dining shelters. Should food prepared in an indoor kitchen and served outside in these spaces now qualify as street food simply because it’s consumed in an open-air setting?

Similarly food trucks, which have grown exponentially in many cities, further complicates the meaning of street food. Does their mobility and presence in urban settings automatically make them purveyors of street food, or are they merely rebranding the same fare served in brick-and-mortar restaurants?

These examples and the questions posed highlight the fluidity of the street food concept and seem to suggest that this type of cuisine is now less about the specific types of food that fall under the street food label, the context in which it is served, and the experience that the consumer has by eating it.

The Evolving Nature of Street Food

It’s important to recognize that the spread of so-called street food into new settings — such as malls, upscale restaurants, or even food trucks — is also indicative of its adaptability, creativity of the people who prepare it, and its influence.

The global popularity of street food has allowed vendors, chefs and cooks to experiment with traditional recipes, giving rise to fusion cuisines and new dining experiences that may attract new and diverse audiences.

Although this evolution may appear to dilute the original concept and meal, it also speaks to the dynamic nature of food culture in urban environments.

However, this expansion raises a tension: is street food evolving into something new, or is its identity being co-opted by commercial interests, reducing it to just another marketing gimmick?

A Lack of Consensus

The reluctance to definitively define street food isn’t just a cultural or linguistic debate; it extends to scholarly discussions in fields like urban studies, public health, nutrition, and food sciences.

Likely due to the complexities of global culinary traditions (think Bangkok or Mexico City), changing food consumption patterns, and the commercialization of what was once grassroots cuisine, many academics writing about street food and publishing in scholarly journals have been hesitant to lock down a clear definition.

The difficulty of applying a uniform definition to street food may be indicative of the vast differences in cultural, economic, and geographical contexts in which street food is prepared, sold and consumed.

Instead of focusing on rigid definitions and authenticity, perhaps we should also consider street food as a reflection of broader social and economic forces; ones that include the intertwined processes of migration, urbanization, and globalization.

Food for thought

Although street food was once tied to local, informal, and sometimes precarious street culture practices, in many parts of the world its evolved into a type of cuisine that is prepared, sold, and consumed by people far removed from the streets in which it might have been born.

This transformation has had an effect not just on what now constitutes street food, but changing food culture and consumer preferences.

Street food now embodies adaptability, ingenuity, and opportunity.

These changes should be understood every time you take a bite, slurp, swallow, enjoy, and perhaps digest your food.

Photo Credit

Photographer: Tore Bustad

Title: Street Food