Street Food - History

History

Small fried fish were a street food in ancient Greece, although Theophrastus held the custom of street food in low regard. Evidence of a large number of street food vendors were discovered during the excavation of Pompeii. Street food was widely utilized by poor urban residents of ancient Rome whose tenement homes did not have ovens or hearths, with chickpea soup being one of the common meals, along with bread and grain paste. In ancient China, where street foods generally catered to the poor, weathly residents would send servants to buy street foods and bring meals back for their masters to eat in their homes.

A traveling Florentine reported in the late 1300s that in Cairo, people carried picnic cloths made of raw hide to spread on the streets and eat their meals of lamb kebabs, rice and fritters that they had purchased from street vendors. In Renaissance Turkey, many crossroads saw vendors selling "fragrant bites of hot meat", including chicken and lamb that had been spit roasted.

Aztec marketplaces had vendors that sold beverages such as atolli ("a gruel made from maize dough"), almost 50 types of tamales (with ingredients that ranged from the meat of turkey, rabbit, gopher, frog, and fish to fruits, eggs, and maize flowers), as well as insects and stews. After Spanish colonization of Peru and importation of European food stocks like wheat, sugarcane and livestock, most commoners continued primarily to eat their traditional diets, but did add grilled beef hearts sold by street vendors. Some of Lima's 19th century street vendors such as "Erasmo, the 'negro' sango vendor" and Na Aguedita are still remembered today.

During the American Colonial period, street vendors sold "pepper pot soup" (tripe) "oysters, roasted corn ears, fruit and sweets," with oysters being a low-priced commodity until the 1910s when overfishing caused prices to rise. As of 1707, after previous restrictions that had limited their operating hours, street food vendors had been banned in New York City. Many women of African descent made their living selling street foods in America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; with products ranging from fruit, cakes and nuts in Savannah, to coffee, biscuits, pralines and other sweets in New Orleans. In the 1800s street food vendors in Transylvania sold gingerbread-nuts, cream mixed with corn, and bacon and other meat fried on tops of ceramic vessels with hot coals inside.

French fries probably originated as a street food consisting of fried strips of potato in Paris in the 1840s. Cracker Jack started as one of many street food exhibits at the Columbian Exposition. Street foods in Victorian London included tripe, pea soup, pea pods in butter, whelk, prawns and jellied eels.

Originally brought to Japan by Chinese immigrants about a hundred years ago, ramen began as a street food for laborers and students, but soon became a "national dish" and even acquired regional variations. The street food culture of South East Asia today was heavily influenced by coolie workers imported from China during the late 1800s. In Thailand, although street food did not become popular among native Thai people until the early 1960s when the urban population began to grow rapidly, by the 1970s it had "displaced home-cooking."