I love me some street food. I’m talking about corn dogs, sausage and peppers on hero bread, sweet corn arepas with melty cheese, gyros, etc. Every time I travel I try all the street food (I think I ate rat in Russia one time). The best street food I ever ate were the sweet roti in Thailand.

The US, while not offering the best quality street food, definitely has a decent selection, although not as substantial as oriental night markets (like one of the ones I’ve visited, shown on the right). I’ve always enjoyed this kind of cheap, fast, crappy food. I remember when I was young my town had the Fiesta Italiana, the week following labor day. And I also remember being upset at how a simple sausage & peppers hero was $4.50! Whew that was expensive for a 12 year old. I remember thinking how that was too much money and I could go to any pizzeria for the same sandwich for $3 or $3.50.

Well fast forward to now, and I’m thinking it’s gotten even worse! Today we were walking through a street fair and the price of a gyro platter (rice, a bit of salad, and some gyro meat) was EIGHT dollars! Are they insane!? One block away from them, every day, is a phenomenal gyro stand (the NE corner of 14th Street and Broadway) where you can get the same platter with or without chicken (as a combo) for $4.00, half the price, and it tastes amazing. Sausage and peppers have gone up from the insane recent prices of between $6-$6.50 to the astounding $7.00. I almost fell over. The arepas are now $3 for a small and $4 for the normal size.

No longer is any of this remotely worthwhile. The food is dirty and greasy, the taste is lacking, and there is no love. I’m thinking the sweet spot in terms of price-value-time was for people who were adults in the early eighties. While the prices were a bit more expensive than store prices, they were still affordable. Oh well.

posted by Lon at 02:42 PM Filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.