Comida típica

Fancy restaurants usually have access to purified water with which to
wash and prepare food, and refrigeration with which to store it while
they "wait for your arrival." Street vendors have neither, and the oil
can be rancid--overused to save money--the food exposed to dirty hands,
utensils, and flies, and the food not thoroughly cooked or heated
through for lack of enough fuel.

Eat wherever and whatever you like; food on the street is mighty tasty,
but it's not necessarily "healthier."

I believe you are deluding yourself if you somehow think the hands of a
street vendor are not as clean as a restaurant chefs.

You have the benefit of seeing the food cooked at street stalls, and the
turnover is usually higher. Having spent a lot of time in poor countries, I
have more faith in street food than restaurant food, but then I know what to
look for too.
---
DFM

(Miguel Cruz) wrote:
Go Fig wrote:
Don't you normally eat from street vendors and the like ?

When I can.

Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
street food never bothered me. Quite the contrary: my body accepted it
as an excellent source of fuel and nutrition.

Someone in a rec.travel forum responded, in paraphrase, "Of course!
The street food has high turnover. Fancy restaurants had to wait for
your arrival."

Further, street food is "typical food" meaning it's most reflective of
local taste. That's one of the most fun things of travel, experiencing
the local cuisine with the locals as the locals prefer it. They
usually know what's strange to you, are pleased when you like it and
amused if you don't.

To support my allegation, I urge you to visit the main square of your
town where food vendors congegrate. And I further encourage you to
visit your local amsuement park or visiting carnival. You'll find the
food you love and will probably be unable to resist procuring a
portion of your favorite.
__________________________________________________ __________
A San Franciscan in (where else?) San Francisco
http://geocities.com/dancefest/ http://geocities.com/iconoc/
ICQ: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/19098103 IClast at SFbay Net

Icono Clast wrote:

Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
street food never bothered me.

Sorry, but your logic--that it was the restaurant food that made you
sick--is faulty. Food poisoning can occur as long as 36 hours after
ingesting the food; we tend to blame the last meal we ate because that's
what comes back up. In that 36 hours, how much street food did you eat,
compared to a single restaurant meal? The odds are pretty good that it
was the street food that did it.

Someone in a rec.travel forum responded, in paraphrase, "Of course!
The street food has high turnover. Fancy restaurants had to wait for
your arrival."

Fancy restaurants usually have access to purified water with which to
wash and prepare food, and refrigeration with which to store it while
they "wait for your arrival." Street vendors have neither, and the oil
can be rancid--overused to save money--the food exposed to dirty hands,
utensils, and flies, and the food not thoroughly cooked or heated
through for lack of enough fuel.

Eat wherever and whatever you like; food on the street is mighty tasty,
but it's not necessarily "healthier."

Maggie

Maggie White wrote:
Icono Clast wrote:
Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious, healthful,
and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During nine weeks in
South America, for example, I got three doses of food poisoning: Each one
was after eating in a first-class joint. The street food never bothered
me.

Sorry, but your logic--that it was the restaurant food that made you
sick--is faulty. Food poisoning can occur as long as 36 hours after
ingesting the food; we tend to blame the last meal we ate because that's
what comes back up. In that 36 hours, how much street food did you eat,
compared to a single restaurant meal? The odds are pretty good that it
was the street food that did it.

I've repeated his experiment with granularity far coarser than 36 hours.

Ever since I started eschewing restaurants and eating exclusively street
food on my leisure trips a few years ago, I haven't been sick once. Not
once. At all. This includes many months in Africa, the Middle East, Europe,
Latin America, and Asia.

Prior to that I'd have a problem every few weeks on average while traveling
in poor developing countries.

Fancy restaurants usually have access to purified water with which to
wash and prepare food, and refrigeration with which to store it while
they "wait for your arrival." Street vendors have neither, and the oil
can be rancid--overused to save money--the food exposed to dirty hands,
utensils, and flies, and the food not thoroughly cooked or heated
through for lack of enough fuel.

Yet they manage to keep me healthy when restaurants cannot. Who knows what
cost-cutting measures are going on behind closed doors where neither you nor
I nor self-preservation-interested locals can watch? Why do you imagine that
in restaurant kitchens people are fastidiously washing their hands and
delicately escorting flies and roaches out the back door?

Eat wherever and whatever you like; food on the street is mighty tasty,
but it's not necessarily "healthier."

I couldn't disagree more. And I haven't seen where the evidence in support
of the restaurants-are-safer viewpoint gets any more credible than wishful
thinking.

miguel
--
See the world from your web browser: http://travel.u.nu/

Maggie White wrote:
Food poisoning can occur as long as 36 hours after ingesti[o]n

I've never heard that figure. The one I've heard is six hours and
that's the time I use to determine the source of the problem.

Eat wherever and whatever you like; food on the street is mighty tasty,
but it's not necessarily "healthier."

Thank you but I refer you to Migue's preceding comments.

***

Here's the most recent incident:

From: Icono Clast ) Date: 2000-09-08 04:01:05 PST
Subject: Gravy's Soul Food Restaurant . . .

.. . . is at 2511 Geneva Avenue, Daly City (Telephone: 415/337-9122)
further described as "The Gumbo Specialist Serving New Orleans Tasty
Soul Foods since 1995".

Although this is not a barbecue joint, they do have an excellent BBQ
sauce. The $20 we paid was a fair price.

We were warmly greeted and the owner moved tables about to give us a
place to sit in the small seating area. He took our order and, after
a short wait, served us in open take-out containers with plastic
spoons.

00:00 - I had the Catfish with Yam and Black-Eyed Peas. Rice and Corn
Bread came along. She had Baked Chicken with Yam and Collard Greens.
I had not expected the Catfish to be cut into large pieces and
battered and deep fried but it was. It was done to perfection with
almost no hint of grease. It was excellent.

Her baked chicken was almost as good. The Collard Greens that,
normally, I don't like were very tasty and I wish I had ordered them.

01:00-03:30 - We attended a performance at the Cow Palace and went to
a bar to hear some music.

05:30 - I felt a bit nauseous and went to the toilet but returned
having done nothing but wash my hands.

05:45 - I felt quite nauseous and couldn't get to the toilet fast
enough. Literally. I opened the door and up it came missing the sink
by about thirty inches. The second convulsion was about thirty
seconds later but I had gotten to the sink. The third, and last, was
about a minute after the second.

05:50 - The bar manager came along. I told him that I felt fine and
didn't suspect food poisoning but couldn't imagine what was wrong. He
agreed, probably knowing the symptoms better than I. He gave me a
bottle of Ginger Ale refusing to accept my apology for the mess I'd
created. We went home.
The ride home was disturbing because I couldn't imagine what
was
wrong and almost went to hospital emergency just in case it was
something serious.

06:10 - The unpleasantness of food poisoning proved to be the case.
My body temperature was 1.7° below my normal. It passed quickly (no
pun intended) and I'm well today, thank you.

My girlfriend had no symptoms at all. Because the catfish was so hot
and well-prepared, I don't suspect it yet it was the only thing I ate
that my girlfriend did not. I had eaten nothing for about six hours
prior to visiting Gravy's and nothing after. At the bar, I was
working on a beer that came in a bottle.
__________________________________________________ ___________
A San Franciscan in 47.335 mile² San Francisco
http://geocities.com/dancefest/ http://geocities.com/iconoc/
ICQ: http://wwp.mirabilis.com/19098103 IClast at SFbay Net

Following up to Icono Clast

Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
street food never bothered me. Quite the contrary: my body accepted it
as an excellent source of fuel and nutrition.

Street food in London is prepared by people with no access to
running water, think about it. I wouldn't touch a street burger
or hotdog with a bargepole. Most of it is full of fat. Restaurant
food *may* be full of fat but you have the choice.
I have eaten in London restaurants all my life and never been
poisoned.
--
Mike Reid
"Art is the lie that reveals the truth" P.Picasso
UK walking "http://www.fellwalk.co.uk" -- you can email us@ this site
Spain,cuisines and walking "http://www.fell-walker.co.uk" -- dontuse@ all, it's a spamtrap

Reid wrote:

Following up to Icono Clast

Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
street food never bothered me. Quite the contrary: my body accepted it
as an excellent source of fuel and nutrition.

Street food in London is prepared by people with no access to
running water, think about it. I wouldn't touch a street burger
or hotdog with a bargepole. Most of it is full of fat. Restaurant
food *may* be full of fat but you have the choice.
I have eaten in London restaurants all my life and never been
poisoned.

I've eaten in a few third world countries' restaurants, and never been
poisoned. I'm not sure if I've ever had food poisoning though.

It might be different now, but when I was in Delhi, _locals_ told me not
to eat food off the street- it made them ill as well, so they said. As a
result, I didn't.

It's demonstrably true that some restaurants have appalling hygeine, but
so do some street vendors.

David

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.co.uk
davidhorne (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

David Horne wrote:

I'm not sure if I've ever had food poisoning though.

That is, _wherever_ I've eaten. Maybe I just have a strong stomach!

David

--
David Horne- www.davidhorne.co.uk
davidhorne (at) davidhorne (dot) co (dot) uk

Icono Clast wrote:
Me, too. I'm a great advocate of street food. It's delicious,
healthful, and usually healthier than fancy restaurant food. During
nine weeks in South America, for example, I got three doses of food
poisoning: Each one was after eating in a first-class joint. The
street food never bothered me.

"Maggie White" wrote:
Fancy restaurants usually have access to purified water with which to
wash and prepare food, and refrigeration with which to store it while
they "wait for your arrival." Street vendors have neither, and the oil
can be rancid--overused to save money--the food exposed to dirty hands,
utensils, and flies, and the food not thoroughly cooked or heated
through for lack of enough fuel.

What I've found in my travels is that neither street vendors nor five-star
restaurants produce inherently wonderful or poisonous food. The trick when
traveling isn't to avoid one or the other but to eat where all the locals
are eating. If a place is empty while something half a block down the street
is mobbed, there's a reason for it.

Same applies to finding good ethnic cuisine wherever you are right now.
There are two Vietnamese restaurants near my home. Around dinner time one is
always jam packed with Vietnamese people, while the other has two or three
groups of people who are... well... not Vietnamese by any stretch of the
imagination. Which one do you think serves better Vietnamese food?

Richard

David Horne wrote:
Reid wrote:
Street food in London is prepared by people with no access to running
water, think about it. I wouldn't touch a street burger or hotdog with a
bargepole.

I wouldn't call what you find in London street food. It's just casual
vendors mainly targeting drunk people coming out of bars. Street food is
what's been done for centuries.

It might be different now, but when I was in Delhi, _locals_ told me not
to eat food off the street- it made them ill as well, so they said. As a
result, I didn't.

You have to go where the locals go.

That said, I had some amusing conversation with locals in India who insisted
that it was not possible to travel in India for any less money than one
could in the USA or Europe. "One must stay in hotels of a certain standard
in order to be safe," I was told, "and this standard will be costing you
$150 per night in Delhi and in London." These are the same people who would
insist that street food was "out of the question" when we were going around
town.

So it's definitely possible for locals to be out of touch!

It's demonstrably true that some restaurants have appalling hygeine, but
so do some street vendors.

Yes - difference is that the appalling hygiene at those street vendors is
readily visible to all, and people then avoid them. Furthermore, they depend
far more on regular custom than restaurants targeting tourists (who are
usually in town for a few days) so local knowledge about their ongoing
safety is more pronounced.

miguel
--
See the world from your web browser: http://travel.u.nu/