5 things to consider before eating street food
January 21st, 2012 § Leave a Comment
I’ve got a pretty damn good immune system that handles all types of food. I’ve had near-raw shellfish in a wet market in Phnom Penh and duck and quail embryos in a back alley in Ho Chi Minh City without having to spend extra time in the bathroom the next morning (ironically, the only time in recent memory that I’ve had a bad case of diarrhea was after eating an undercooked pigeon at Hong Kong’s L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon when it had two stars). In spite of this, I still take precautions whenever I eat off the streets.
So here are 5 things to consider before you put that fried pig’s intestine skewer in your mouth:
- Eat where the locals eat. There are times when social proofs mean nothing, but when it comes to food, when there are people clamoring to eat it, it’s usually worth the wait. And you know they didn’t get sick when they last ate the food.
- Check how the food is stored. Is raw food being left out in the open? Are there bugs crawling on them? Use your senses to see/smell(/touch/hear/taste?) if the ingredients are fresh and safe for consumption.
- The ingredients for a delicious Vietnamese sandwich!
- Think about where they get their water. When I was a kid, I used to believe that stinky tofu got its stench from being marinated in sewage water. So whenever I ate stuff on the street, I’d make sure that the vendor wasn’t anywhere near public bathrooms or drain systems — in case that was their water source for cooking/cleaning. Jokes aside, unclean water is one of the leading causes of Hepatitis A, so make sure whoever’s preparing your food has access to clean water.
- Deep fried soft shelled crab from Shanghai last summer!
- See if the food is being cooked properly. The safest type of street food to eat is food that is fried, because most germs are killed when thrown into a wok full of hot oil. But what you eat doesn’t have to be fried, as long as they’re handled and cooked right.
- Look for the nearest bathroom. Think of this as Plan B. If these precautions do fail you, you know you’ll have somewhere to retreat to.
Stick to these tips and you should be fine. This was how I spent two weeks in India without having to take any anti-diarrheal drugs. This trip, I’ve had the exact same dishes in high-end restaurants as I had sitting on some pavement next to a makeshift gas stove — the only difference was that they cost 10-20 times more in the restaurant. Don’t let your excessive germaphobia dictate what you eat when your’e traveling, because you can find some of the best food on the streets.
