Street Food

It doesn't have the merry jingle of an ice cream truck. It brings no sweets. But the children scramble just the same when the yellow truck makes the slow, steep climb up Logavina Street. The truck carries fresh drinking water - truly a cause for celebration in these bare-bone times. But a cause for worry, too. Just venturing out for a loaf of bread or a bucket of water in this besieged capital is a perilous act. Logavina Street has become so dangerous in recent months that the intersections are plastered with hand-lettered signs that say: Pazi Snajper.

A few things that Mumbai, India, ingrains in you: a taste for Bollywood, a tolerance of traffic, and a love of chaat , the street food of old Bombay. So I lit up when I saw Desi Chaat, a tiny, West Philly take-out storefront. The samosa had spent a little too long under the heat lamp. But the papri chaat (distinguished by boiled potatoes and chickpeas) made me smile. Your typical chaat employs a mixture of savories, in this case tossed with mango and pomegranate seeds and dotted with yogurt and mint, tamarind-date and plum sauces that you stir into crispy bits made here from (slightly oily)

  The Asian street-food bandwagon has picked up some Main Line polish, as Nectar chef Patrick Feury has taken the steamed pork bun to a dangerous place: potential addiction. Feury has sourced a perfect bun, a palm-sized white cloud of fold-over pastry. But it's the pork belly inside that got me, which Feury gives the expected fusion approach, the well-trimmed meat rolled up like Italian porchetta, then basted in a dark, gingery Asian braise. Perfectly rendered, but still tender and juicy, the pork roulade is shined with hoisin, then dabbed with sriracha-spiked Kewpie Japanese mayonnaise.

What is it? The owners of Calypso (formerly of the Chestnut Hill Farmers Market) went mobile last year with Mini Trini, featuring a simple menu of delicacies from the Caribbean island of Trinidad. Real street: Owner Iman Marcano said their most popular item is the traditional street food called double. "The same way you buy hot dogs on the street, [double is] what people are selling on the corners in Trinidad," Marcano said. A double is fried dough (bara) filled with curried chickpeas (chana)

It's more a ripple than a wave, but we'll take it - the uptick in Indian street-food eats beyond the buffet-alley along the Penn campus. There's Desi Chaat House, serving up the fried crisps, chickpeas, and yogurt at 42d and Baltimore. And for steam-table classics, tiny, tidy Mumbai Bistro, at Ninth and Locust. Now say hello to dosas, those grand, paper-thin moons of rice crepes, debuting in the no-frills precincts of the new Philadelphia Chutney Company, 16th and Sansom. There's other South Indian vegetarian fare there (tikka, and idli and uttpa)

_ It's not National Pancake Week (that was in February), or even National Pancake Day (you just missed it Tuesday), but Max Brenner, Chocolate by the Bald Man (1420 Walnut St., 215-344-8150) wants to celebrate anyway, with some weekend brunch specials: Illegal Chocolate Chocolate Pancakes, with dark chocolate truffle cream, milk chocolate shavings, spiced pecans and caramelized bananas; and Royal Berries Pancakes, with candied blueberries, blood orange maple syrup. _ Philadelphia chef Jose Garces and master brewer Phil Leinhart, of Cooperstown, N.Y.'s Brewery Ommegang, will join forces at JG Domestic (2929 Arch St. at the Cira Centre, 215-222-2363)

Fans of the old-school Continental elegance that once was Overtures will likely be in for an anti-ambience shock when they step into the old Passyunk Avenue haunt to discover the bare-bones banquet-chair decor of its new tenant. But what the fledgling S&H Kebab House lacks in style, it more than makes up for in flavor and value. This Turkish grill from owners Sal Kucuk (he's the "S") and chef Hussein Yuksel (he's the "H") is all about spot-on, homemade Ottoman classics, and this iskender kebab is one of my favorites.

Before leaving on a trip, most travelers prepare for what they imagine as the worst-case scenarios: rain, sunburn, boredom. The remedies for these potential inconveniences are simple: Pack a slicker, a bottle of sunscreen, and a heavily downloaded Kindle, then slam the suitcase shut. But sometimes the setback is more serious than a lobster-red nose. What couldit be? Food poisoning, a broken limb, a deep laceration, typhoid, dengue fever, malaria. And what can fix you? Proper medical care, no matter the continent, country, city or mountain village.

Ryo Igarashi does not want to repeat 2012. The chef had closed Maru Global, the Japanese street-food restaurant in Center City that he ran with his wife, Nicole. He had moved the operation to a friend's restaurant in Society Hill when he bent down one day to pick up a pen and smacked his head on the corner of a prep table. "I saw stars but kept working," he said. Still hurting two weeks later, he said, he went to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with a fractured skull and underwent brain surgery.

Let's cut to the chase: The reaction to the news last week that Tony Luke's, the gritty South Philly sandwich stand, was coming out with a frozen, microwavable/boil-in-a-bag version of its venerable cheesesteak was not exactly positive. "Sounds gross," was one of the milder e-mailed posts. "Two words," went another: " Nas-Tee . " "Blechhh," spat another. Then they got personal: "Tony sold out to The Man!" They had another thing in common. None of the commenters (except one, a defender)