Street Food

Most prepackaged falafel taste more like cardboard than like the authentic version of this Middle Eastern street food. But these from Falafel Republic are surprisingly fluffy and delicious, made of mashed chickpeas, fava beans, onions, and spices. Just zap them in the microwave and add your own tzatziki sauce. Vegan and gluten-free.   Cherries in chocolate John & Kira's chocolates return to the local farmers markets after a respite from the heat. Among the new offerings in their new fall line-up are these: a dried, tart cherry, enveloped in Valrhona dark chocolate with a touch of brandy.

Eating street food in Mexico - does the idea conjure up the very essence of adventurous traveling, or does it send you rushing for the Pepto-Bismol? If you're like many Americans, the thought is probably about as appealing as visiting a country undergoing a military takeover. After all, doesn't everybody know you shouldn't even drink the water in Mexico? And ordering in a restaurant - even if you're fluent in Spanish - can be adventure enough, without trying to deal with street vendors (who are notoriously dirty, right?

It's the "trucker's" moment in Philadelphia's food world now - especially when it comes to lunch. That's when some of the area's most exciting new food options are making the scene, rolling in on four wheels with a griddle full of creativity and an entrepreneurial dream. Channeling a Shane Victorino craving for Super Spam musubi? Check. Tiny Poi Dog at Temple University is your new Hawaiian snack shrine. In need of stunningly rich peanut butter ice cream sandwiched between double chocolate chip cookies?

There was so much syrupy hoisin and sweet sauce streaked across my first dinner at Kong - Northern Liberties' new ode to Hong Kong street food - that it was pretty clear Michael O'Halloran's "authenticator" wasn't having the desired effect. That's a tough spot to put your Chinese mother-in-law in ("authenticator," that is), especially when you and your team of chefs plan to stray as perilously far from the familiar as Kong's kitchen does. But that is exactly the role to which his wife's mother, Suet Ping Chiu, has been elected, the resident expert to lend O'Halloran's wide-ranging menu of dumplings, bar snacks, and noodle soups a little Hong Kong street cred.

The week of Feb. 1 marks the opening of Maru Global (255 S. 10th St., 267-273-0567), Philadelphia's first quick-serve eatery focused on takoyaki, the puffy, fried crepe balls. The Japanese street food is traditionally studded with octopus, but Tokyo-born chef Ryo Igarashi and his wife, Nicole, both local restaurant veterans, are offering multiple varieties, including Philly cheesesteak, pizza, spicy shrimp, barbecue, and sweet-and-sour miso. The original, based on scallion and red ginger, can be made to order with shrimp, chicken, sirloin, or octopus.

When I think of the most memorable foods I have tasted around the globe, it's not the decadent, multicourse, four-hour dinner in a Michelin-starred Paris restaurant I dream about - it's the perfectly tender crepe, sparingly graced with cinnamon and sugar and just enough sweet butter to melt it into a slick of caramel, that I bought from a street vendor in the 7th Arrondissment for 1 euro. I long for the charred, sweet and salty aroma and flavor of the just-plucked-from-the-sea lobster, grilled with chiles and lime and tucked into a fresh corn tortilla with a few slices of avocado and crema, that I ate on a beach in Mexico.

The more cultured among us may raise a pinkie to the James Beard Foundation, which annually bestows its Beard Awards on the nation's loftier restaurants and chefs. But for populist street food honors, we have the Vendy Awards, which recognize sidewalk chefs. Philly is amid a boom in food trucks, with zones extending from LOVE Park to the universities. Joining the cheesesteak and falafel trucks are a new wave of street vendors offering fish tacos, delicate macaroons, and even pizza from a wood-burning oven.

"A lot of people think of crepes as fancy food," says Crêpe Town owner Julie Bartfield, who, with her chef-husband Mike, has been operating the stand in the Bellevue food court for a few months. "They are more like street food. Healthy, too. " Mike crisps the ethereal pancake to order, before layering in sweet or savory fillings. The Belgium chocolate-cherry is hard to resist. The crepe recipe was passed down to Mike from his great-grandfather. By spring, the Bartfields hope to be serving their treats in a second, street-level Center City shop.

  As niches in the local food world go, the current demand for the Japanese street food takoyaki is as small as the takoyaki itself. It's a petite delicacy: a globe-shaped puff of pancake batter about the size of a golf ball. But Nicole Igarashi and her Tokyo-born husband-chef, Ryo, already knew the power of this treat before they opened their quirky Japanese street-food storefront dedicated to variations on the genre in February. A great takoyaki - its crust a delicate crisp, its center a melty core of savory batter scented with dashi, mountain yam, pickled ginger, and a chewy morsel of your choice (octopus is traditional)

Creme de la crepe "A lot of people think of crepes as fancy food," says Crêpe Town owner Julie Bartfield, who, with her chef-husband Mike, has been operating the stand in the Bellevue food court for a few months. "They are more like street food. Healthy, too. " Mike crisps the ethereal pancake to order, before layering in sweet or savory fillings. The Belgium chocolate-cherry is hard to resist. The crepe recipe was passed down to Mike from his great-grandfather. By spring, the Bartfields hope to be serving their treats in a second, street-level Center City shop.

It's the "trucker's" moment in Philadelphia's food world now - especially when it comes to lunch. That's when some of the area's most exciting new food options are making the scene, rolling in on four wheels with a griddle full of creativity and an entrepreneurial dream. Channeling a Shane Victorino craving for Super Spam musubi? Check. Tiny Poi Dog at Temple University is your new Hawaiian snack shrine. In need of stunningly rich peanut butter ice cream sandwiched between double chocolate chip cookies?

Food trucks selling gourmet goods such as tacos, barbecue and cupcakes have grown in popularity in recent years. But people have been buying street food for generations. Food carts were already a fixture in many cities in the 1800s. Hot dog, sausage and pretzel vendors have been selling quick lunches to office workers and tourists on city streets and in beach towns since the early 1900s. The website for Good Humor ice cream says the company's first trucks hit the road in 1920.

The more cultured among us may raise a pinkie to the James Beard Foundation, which annually bestows its Beard Awards on the nation's loftier restaurants and chefs. But for populist street food honors, we have the Vendy Awards, which recognize sidewalk chefs. Philly is amid a boom in food trucks, with zones extending from LOVE Park to the universities. Joining the cheesesteak and falafel trucks are a new wave of street vendors offering fish tacos, delicate macaroons, and even pizza from a wood-burning oven.

James Beard award-winning food writer John T. Edge has worked hot dog carts in the French Quarter and in his hometown of Oxford, Miss., and indulged in street food around the world, so when it came to surveying the mobile eats in the United States, he was in his element. The New York Times' "United Tastes" columnist and director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi lovingly immersed himself in the research for The Truck Food Cookbook (Workman)

Creme de la crepe "A lot of people think of crepes as fancy food," says Crêpe Town owner Julie Bartfield, who, with her chef-husband Mike, has been operating the stand in the Bellevue food court for a few months. "They are more like street food. Healthy, too. " Mike crisps the ethereal pancake to order, before layering in sweet or savory fillings. The Belgium chocolate-cherry is hard to resist. The crepe recipe was passed down to Mike from his great-grandfather. By spring, the Bartfields hope to be serving their treats in a second, street-level Center City shop.

"A lot of people think of crepes as fancy food," says Crêpe Town owner Julie Bartfield, who, with her chef-husband Mike, has been operating the stand in the Bellevue food court for a few months. "They are more like street food. Healthy, too. " Mike crisps the ethereal pancake to order, before layering in sweet or savory fillings. The Belgium chocolate-cherry is hard to resist. The crepe recipe was passed down to Mike from his great-grandfather. By spring, the Bartfields hope to be serving their treats in a second, street-level Center City shop.

Night Market, an evening street-food festival launched as an experiment in 2010 along a stretch of then newly popular East Passyunk Avenue, proved the wisdom of its ways last Thursday on Germantown Avenue in Mount Airy. "People are talking to each other as they wait in the lines at the food trucks," said Jim Villarreal, a local with his own cable show about dreams. "They're talking to people they never would have talked to in other circumstances," he marveled at the scene before him. They're all mixing and doing what Mount Airy is all about.

Most prepackaged falafel taste more like cardboard than like the authentic version of this Middle Eastern street food. But these from Falafel Republic are surprisingly fluffy and delicious, made of mashed chickpeas, fava beans, onions, and spices. Just zap them in the microwave and add your own tzatziki sauce. Vegan and gluten-free.   Cherries in chocolate John & Kira's chocolates return to the local farmers markets after a respite from the heat. Among the new offerings in their new fall line-up are these: a dried, tart cherry, enveloped in Valrhona dark chocolate with a touch of brandy.

  As niches in the local food world go, the current demand for the Japanese street food takoyaki is as small as the takoyaki itself. It's a petite delicacy: a globe-shaped puff of pancake batter about the size of a golf ball. But Nicole Igarashi and her Tokyo-born husband-chef, Ryo, already knew the power of this treat before they opened their quirky Japanese street-food storefront dedicated to variations on the genre in February. A great takoyaki - its crust a delicate crisp, its center a melty core of savory batter scented with dashi, mountain yam, pickled ginger, and a chewy morsel of your choice (octopus is traditional)

When I think of the most memorable foods I have tasted around the globe, it's not the decadent, multicourse, four-hour dinner in a Michelin-starred Paris restaurant I dream about - it's the perfectly tender crepe, sparingly graced with cinnamon and sugar and just enough sweet butter to melt it into a slick of caramel, that I bought from a street vendor in the 7th Arrondissment for 1 euro. I long for the charred, sweet and salty aroma and flavor of the just-plucked-from-the-sea lobster, grilled with chiles and lime and tucked into a fresh corn tortilla with a few slices of avocado and crema, that I ate on a beach in Mexico.