Street food does not only appease hunger. Joined to the surrounding environment and scenery, it gives completely separate feeling from the host country. Alas, in the minds of most tourists, street vendors pose a hidden danger due to a lot of brochures, cautioning to buy food in the street and eat it with unwashed hands. However, eating only in restaurants, you’re missing an important part of local culture. So it is still better take the risk and choose the point where more Aborigines gather, to taste what is there that draws so much to a particular tray of food.
Dish: Banh mi
Best cooked in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Every day at five o’clock very little time is required for a little Vietnamese trader, rolling up his truck at 37 Nguyen Trai Street, to turn you into a true lover of Asian sandwich. In just a few tens of seconds chef will bring you a sandwich, which, despite the French colonial appearance, is completely a Vietnamese dish. Removing paper packaging and fixed on the teeth in the molding, you immediately feel that it is extraordinarily crisp, with rice flour, from which it is made. Then you taste buds and recognize soft and still warm slices of grilled pork, crisp cucumber, sweet pickled carrots and daikon, cilantro and a little Vietnamese Sauce Mayo. If we add to those thin trickles of hot sauce, we get probably the best sandwich in the world. Or, you get, at least, the best of those just for 30 cents.
Dish: Tacos
Best cooked in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
Tacos – a dish that is convenient to eat on the go, they say, it was invented by itinerant Mexican cowboys who preferred to dine, not getting out of the saddle. Regarding the “baseness” origin of a dish, it is not surprising that the question of where to taste the best tacos in the city, the experts soon will take you to the next street corner than to a restaurant. This is especially evident in the colonial and slightly refined San Miguel de Allende, located four hours drive north of the capital. After the supper tourists disperse to their hotels, street vendors of tacos are just beginning to heat up their pan. And the best seller is on the corner of Calle de Mesones and Pepe Llanos, a couple of minutes walk from the main square. Once you see a lot of satisfied people in the floodlighting, gathered near the hawker, then you have reached the goal. Order some tacos al pastor and watch as one of the cooks cuts pieces with chunks of pork, fried on a skewer, presses them to the small size of a CD-ROM tortilla flavor and tarts with pickled salsa.
Dish: Sandwich with tripe
Best cooked in Florence, Italy
Florentines love their traditional peasant dishes. In this case, there is a bright example of how Tuscan ingenuity has turned a commonplace thing as cow stomach, into something sublime. Even if you’ve never planned to taste tripe, in Florence, it is still strongly recommended to try. Just close your eyes and bite, you’ll like it. Florentines stew the tripe with garlic and herbs until it starts to literally melt in your mouth. They then wrap the broth in a crispy pancake and spice with chili sauce or a piquant salsa and capers and anchovies. Each Florentine has its own favorite place, where he regularly buys these sandwiches. The most popular of them is Civiltà della Trippa in the Northern part of Florence and Piazzale di Porta Romana.
