Food beat on the street

Editor's note: The following column has been edited to correct the name of the donner beef sandwich.

Where's the best place to eat in New York? How about Paris or London? The answer, it turns out, is the same for all these places: Right on the street.

That's what celebrity chef Susan Feniger maintains. "I believe that in any country, what you see and taste on the street is the best food you'll find ...," she says.

I don't disagree. Sure, I enjoy restaurants, but nonetheless I've eaten some great food strolling down a bustling street, seated on a bench in a city square or browsing through a bazaar.

Paris is a case in point. The city that invented haute cuisine has plenty of wonderful bistros, brasseries and temples to gastronomy, and I've loved my visits to any number of them. Among my fondest memories of the City of Light are the donner beef sandwiches peddled by street vendors in the Latin Quarter on the Rue la Harpe in the shadow of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Kaya Toast, a classic breakfast — and hangover cure — in Singapore is street food turned haute cuisine at Susan Feniger’s Street restaurant in Los Angeles. (TOM HARTE)

So it is with every other place I've been. Whether it be the frites of Brussels, the pizza sold by the slice in Rome, the fish and chips of London, the shawarma of Istanbul, the currywurst of Berlin, the pretzels of Philadelphia, the sausages of Nuremberg, the hot dogs of New York City or the fry bread of Tucson -- these have been among the best foods I have eaten.

That's not to say that street food always approaches gourmet quality. Some of it can be off-putting, unsafe, or worse, pedestrian. While I enjoyed street food in Beijing, for example, I never could work up the courage to eat one of those whole sparrows on a stick. And I learned long ago to avoid ice cream on the streets of Mexico City. It's usually delicious, but there are consequences.

By and large, street food rivals what you find in restaurants, plus it connects you more closely with a country's culture than the typical tourist trap. Certainly eating food off the street is a venerable practice. It goes back thousands of years, at least to Ancient Greece and Rome. Then, before the invention of the restaurant, most people did not have access to a kitchen, so food vendors catered to the hungry. The tradition has persisted right up to the present time, when some 2.5 billion people daily eat street food.

Street food lately has undergone something of a revolution as adventurous chefs who don't want to be burdened by the demands of a traditional restaurant have opted for food trucks that give them the freedom to concentrate on their cuisine.

Moreover, on a recent visit to Los Angeles, where the food truck revolution began, I discovered street food has come full circle. A restaurant there now specializes in street foods from around the world. It's called simply Street, and one bite of its signature Kaya Toast from Singapore is all it took to confirm my belief that street food truly can be haute cuisine.

Kaya Toast

Kaya toast is a classic breakfast -- and hangover cure -- in Singapore, but I doubt you'd find a better version of it in Southeast Asia than this one, adapted from Susan Feniger, chef/owner of Street restaurant in Los Angeles.

1 cup coconut milk

1 cup sugar

3 tablespoons minced ginger

1/8 teaspoon salt

3 eggs

3 egg yolks

2 slices dense white bread

1 and 1/2 tablespoons shaved butter

* Combine coconut milk and 1/2 cup sugar. Stir in ginger and salt, and bring to a boil over high heat. Remove from heat and let steep for ten minutes, then strain.

* Whisk together eggs, yolks and remaining 1/2 cup sugar. Whisk in coconut milk mixture and cook over simmering water for 15-20 minutes until mixture becomes a thick custard.

* Strain into a bowl set over ice water, let cool and refrigerate. Toast each slice of bread on one side and spread two tablespoons of the coconut jam on the unroasted sides.

* Place a thin layer of shaved butter over jam and join slices to make a sandwich. Cut into six wedges and serve with a soft boiled egg drizzled with dark soy sauce and sprinkled with a dash of pepper.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO 63702-0699.