Street Food

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.

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 food trucks that stretch along 38th Street near the western edge of Penn's campus provide an antidote to - no, make that a repudiation of - the sad-sack food-court fare that lurks in greasy shame just blocks to the east. Between Chestnut and Spruce Streets you will encounter, in no particular order, trucks offering soba noodles and bright, fresh-made chicken tacos, a deal at $2 apiece - un-Taco Bell tacos. There are speed bumps of baba ganoush (and feta) and Yue Kee's celebrated - long-lined - Chinese window besting a fair number of Chinatown's own lunch spots, and cheerily advertising proprietarily spelled ma paul tofu . And so on. A Queen of Steaks.

If you are a movie buff, you've probably seen the 1933 black-and-white classic version of "King Kong" with Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong. And there's the successful and flashy 2005 remake with Naomi Watts and Jack Black. Michael O'Halloran, chef/owner of Old City's well-regarded Bistro 7, brings "King Kong" to mind in the fun name of his newly debuted Northern Liberties restaurant, Kong. O'Halloran and his wife and partner, Sophia Lee, wanted to create a restaurant inspired by the Chinese street food of Hong Kong that is part of Lee's heritage.

If you are a movie buff, you've probably seen the 1933 black-and-white classic version of "King Kong" with Fay Wray and Robert Armstrong. And there's the successful and flashy 2005 remake with Naomi Watts and Jack Black. Michael O'Halloran, chef/owner of Old City's well-regarded Bistro 7, brings "King Kong" to mind in the fun name of his newly debuted Northern Liberties restaurant, Kong. O'Halloran and his wife and partner, Sophia Lee, wanted to create a restaurant inspired by the Chinese street food of Hong Kong that is part of Lee's heritage.

Retrenching, rebalancing, whatever you want to call it, the local dining scene went through more than nips and tucks after disposable incomes tanked last year. But it hasn't been an all-bad thing: Menus have been recalibrated, average checks are down (along with some restaurant rents). Even serious-eats places - Bibou and Fond come to mind - are keeping prices in line. And instead of bazillion-dollar steak palaces, we're seeing Asian street food, classy burger joints, pizzerias, and an explosion of barbecue pits, many with Big Names behind them.

A jumble of colors and textures called to me from the flea-market stall. After months of planning a trip to France with my sister, we were in the March? aux Puces de St-Ouen, on the outskirts of Paris. Being a flea-market devotee, my journeying to this large market was a must. And so, my sister and I emerged from the Metro stop early on a Saturday morning into a somewhat gritty, workaday neighborhood. We followed directions in my guidebook. We walked through a gloomy underpass and traversed several blocks, ignoring over-eager vendors with stalls on the market's outskirts, bypassing the lure of knockoff sneakers and Japanese electronics.

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.

If you go to Israel expecting to eat chicken soup, hot pastrami sandwiches and chopped chicken liver, you're in for a surprise. Let it be known that getting your hands on a good kosher dill pickle in Jerusalem is almost as challenging as getting pizza by the slice in Italy. If Israeli cooking isn't knishes, then what is it? That's just what I tried to discover during a recent gastronomic tour of the Holy Land. Since Israelis love to talk politics, it's not always easy to get them onto the subject of food.

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?