South American Street Food

If you listen to a lot of the guide books, street food in South America is not an option. Fueled (I'm assuming) by the lawsuit-happy cultures in the West, Lonely Planet, Footprints, Frommers, et al. display an annoying tendency to preach over-cautiousness to a dizzying extreme. In their worlds, every street-food vendor is an unlicensed hack who wouldn't know soap or a correct cooking temperature if it hit them on the head, and every bite of a road-side consumable is an inevitable salmonella or E. coli infection waiting to happen. Their advice, when it comes to the local street food, basically boils down to this:

"Don't eat it."

Predictably, I chose to utterly ignore such edicts.

Had I not, I would have missed some seriously tasty eats. And I haven't suffered a single gastrointestinal episode for it.

Churro com Doce de Leite, or Breakfasts in Belém

Coxinha de Carne, or Lunch in Santarém

Mostly Done with Lunch in Santerém

An Empanada, or a Snack in Buenos Aires

Mmm... Meat, Onions and Chopped-up Hard-boiled Egg

Not Pictured:
1. Acarajé in Salvador
2. A stick of grilled beef in Rocinha
3. Bags of Brazil nuts / Para nuts in Belém
4. Various salgados (snacks) in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and elsewhere.

I've eaten a LOT of street food. In fact, street food saved me from starving to death on at least one occasion -- on a Sunday in Belém when everything else was shut down and I only managed to consume a single coxinha and a single ham-and-cheese salgado from a vendor down at the Ver-a-peso Market.

That day of eating was still infinitely better than the night I survived on crackers and mayonnaise while I was locked in during the police raid on Rocinha.

Related Entries:
1. Salvador
2. Belém
2. Waking Up By Machine Gun