Street Food

Street Vendors

Whenever I'm abroad, I tend to stay away from restaurants and consume 90% of my meals from street vendors. I prefer street food because it's cheap, convenient, and I see exactly what is being sold so there are no surprises. I also avoid restaurants because I believe that street food is where the authentic cuisines are. Cooked food made to order (usually by a women), street food taste like homemade food. However, I realized that street vending is more than a job, it is an effort to place a place in the exclusive market economy. Scholars have come to name street vending as a business in the informal economy because it lacks legitimacy.

Over winter break I was in China and of course, chowed down to street food. No matter the city I was in, street vendors were there. In Shanghai, a city that is comparable to New York City and surely a world class city, I encountered street vendors conducting their businesses. Even in a wealthy city like Shanghai, there is still a place for street vendors. My observations pushes me to argue that street vendors exist because they are necessary in the development of any world class cities. Scholarship on street vendors argues that vendors provide cheap and fast food to the low wage worker that supports the daily operations of a world class city.