Street Food Quotes

“A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a hundred specialized stands and cannot be understood on a single visit. I felt as though I had a handle on Life Supermarket the first time I shopped there, but I never felt entirely comfortable in a depachika. They are the food equivalent of Borges's "The Library of Babel": if it's edible, someone is probably selling it, but how do you find it? How do you resist the cakes and spices and Chinese delis and bento boxes you'll pass on the way?
At the Isetan depachika, in Shinjuku, French pastry god Pierre Hermé sells his signature cakes and macarons. Not to be outdone, Franco-Japanese pastry god Sadaharu Aoki sells his own nearby. Tokyo is the best place in the world to eat French pastry. The quality and selection are as good as or better than in Paris, and the snootiness factor is zero.
I wandered by a collection of things on sticks: yakitori at one stand, kushiage at another. Kushiage are panko-breaded and fried foods on sticks. At any depachika, you can buy kushiage either golden and cooked, or pale and raw to fry at home. Neither option is terribly appetizing: the fried stuff is losing crispness by the second, and who wants to deep-fry in a poorly ventilated Tokyo apartment in the summer? But the overall effect of the display is mesmerizing: look at all the different foods they've put on sticks! Pork, peppers, mushrooms, squash, taro, and two dozen other little cubes.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“They were all there for the food, the drink, and the ambience, even as everyone devoured plates as disparate as Korean bibimbap and French vichyssoise.
"I'm going over there." Ana pointed to a midnight-blue food truck that was known for having the best bao, steamed Vietnamese buns, in Denver. Which, given the popularity of the southeast Asian cuisine in the city lately, was more of an accomplishment than it might have seemed.
"What about you?" Rachel asked Melody.
"I'm having what you're having. You never steer me wrong."
"Then A Parisian in Denver is the way to go. Come on. I want to say hello to Lilia."
They found their way to the end of the line in front of a food truck painted in red, blue, and white, and Rachel craned her neck to feet a better look at the chalkboard that proclaimed the day's specials. There was French street food like crepes and merguez sausages alongside trendy favorites like duck confit pommes frites.”
― Carla Laureano, The Saturday Night Supper Club

“Street food, she saw. Silky pasta, doughy pizza, steaming pho, obnoxiously tall burgers. Benches had been nestled behind the Royal Festival Hall, and they were filled with people eating personal feasts from paper plates: vast thalis; racks of sticky, black ribs; half lobsters with melting garlic butter and bread. Rows of diners craning to read menus wound between food trucks; queues intermingled, new arrivals negotiating for space. Piglet looked around, the National behind her. She had left the office early, she reasoned; she had time before finding a place to work. She edged forward, walking among the tables. The benches were full, some having to stand, juggling their fried chicken with their phones. There were young men who talked too loudly, laughed with their mouths full, and wore round, tortoiseshell glasses; glamorous women in their fifties and sixties, lunching and drinking; and au pairs with charges no older than twelve who ate salt beef bagels, cacio e pepe, and laksa.”
― Lottie Hazell, Piglet

“Takoyaki are octopus balls- not, thankfully, in the anatomical sense. They're a spherical cake with a chunk of boiled octopus in the center, cooked on a special griddle with hemispherical indentations. If you're familiar with the Danish pancakes called aebleskivers, you know what a takoyaki looks like; the pan is also similar.
Takoyaki are not unknown in the U.S., but I've only ever seen them made fresh at cultural festivals. Iris is a big fan, but I've always been more into the takoyaki aesthetic than the actual food. Takoyaki are always served in a paper or wooden boat and usually topped with mayonnaise, bonito flakes, shredded nori, and takoyaki sauce.”
― Matthew Amster-Burton, Pretty Good Number One: An American Family Eats Tokyo

“Men sat behind charcoal braziers turning ears of corn and fanning skewered liver kebabs they slipped sizzling into pockets of lavash bread with a tangle of cilantro and mint. Ribbons of fruit leather, apricot, plum, tamarind, and cherry, draped like laundry from wires strung between awnings.”
― Donia Bijan, The Last Days of Café Leila

“Half the food that he sends out is raw: ruby cubes of tuna dressed with a heaping mound of fresh wasabi; sea grapes the size of ball bearings that pop like caviar against the roof of your mouth; glistening beads of salmon roe meant to be stuffed into crispy sheets of nori.
The other half gets the blowtorch treatment. Tuna is transformed into a sort of tataki stir-fry, toasted, glazed with ponzu, and tossed with a thicket of spring onions. Fish heads are blitzed under the flame until the cheeks singe and the skin screams and the eyes melt into a glorious stew meant to be extracted with chopsticks. Even sea urchin, those soft orange tongues of ocean umami, with a sweetness so subtle that cooking it is considered heretical in most culinary circles, gets blasted like a crème brûlée by Toyo and his ring of fire.”
― Matt Goulding, Rice, Noodle, Fish: Deep Travels Through Japan's Food Culture

“Palermo is dotted everywhere with frittura shacks- street carts and storefronts specializing in fried foods of all shapes and cardiac impacts. On the fringes of the Ballarò market are bars serving pane e panelle, fried wedges of mashed chickpeas combined with potato fritters and stuffed into a roll the size of a catcher's mitt. This is how the vendors start their days; this is how you should start yours, too. If fried chickpea sandwiches don't register as breakfast food, consider an early evening at Friggitoria Chiluzzo, posted on a plastic stool with a pack of locals, knocking back beers with plates of fried artichokes and arancini, glorious balls of saffron-stained rice stuffed with ragù and fried golden- another delicious ode to Africa.
Indeed, frying food is one of the favorite pastimes of the palermitani, and they do it- as all great frying should be done- with a mix of skill and reckless abandon. Ganci is among the city's most beloved oil baths, a sliver of a store offering more calories per square foot than anywhere I've ever eaten. You can smell the mischief a block before you hit the front door: pizza topped with french fries and fried eggplant, fried rice balls stuffed with ham and cubes of mozzarella, and a ghastly concoction called spiedino that involves a brick of béchamel and meat sauce coated in bread crumbs and fried until you could break someone's window with it.”
― Matt Goulding, Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture

“I eyed the spread, wondering where I should start. Skewers of pork barbecue, the slightest hint of char releasing a delicious, smoky aroma, beckoned me, as did the platter of grilled adobo chicken wings next to it. As I loaded up my plate with meat, my aunt reached over to put a tofu-and-mushroom skewer on my mountain of rice.
"Can you tell me what you think of this, anak? I'm testing the recipes for our Founder's Day booth and this will be our main vegetarian offering. I used a similar marinade as our barbecue, but it's not quite right."
Looking at the array of food on the table, I noticed it was all pica-pica, or finger food. Things that could easily be prepared at the booth and eaten while wandering the festival. The barbecue skewers were obviously the mains, but she also had fish balls (so much better than it sounded) and my favorite, kwek-kwek. The hard-boiled quail eggs were skewered, dipped in a bright orange batter colored with annatto seeds, and deep-fried. So simple and delicious, especially if you dipped it in my aunt's sweet and spicy vinegar sauces.”
― Mia P. Manansala, Homicide and Halo-Halo

“The familiar cooking warmth coming from the booths soothed my anxious thoughts, like entering a labyrinth of barbecued, breaded, deep-fried treats. Acarajé bursting with shrimp. Grilled fish covered in lime juice and raw onion rings. Coxinhas loaded with shredded chicken and potato. Pastéis heavy with extra minced meat and olives. Coconut and cheese tapioca. Crepe sticks, too, prepared on demand right before the customers' eyes, the batter cooked like a waffle and filled with chocolate and doce de leite.”
― Rebecca Carvalho, Salt and Sugar