Street Meat
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
In any large city on Earth, the visitor is likely to find food vendors on nearly every street corner. The food varies from region to region. One may find tacquitos in Mexico and the Southwestern United States, Bratwürstle in Nuremberg, and the hot dogs, knishes and soft pretzels in New York City.
There are varying opinions on the safety of eating from vending carts. While there is some cause for concern regarding the ingredients used and the cleanliness of the carts, there may even be a greater cause for concern regarding the preparation of the food before it even hits the streets.
Scene: 4:30 AM in New York’s Clinton (a.k.a. Hell’s Kitchen). The birds are beginning to sing and the hookers are beginning to wind up a night’s work as the bars turn out the last stragglers onto the city streets. The sun barely breaches the tops of the east side skyscrapers when lines of none-too-clean amateur chefs arrive at the garages that house the food carts. The vendors, licensed and unlicensed alike, arrive a few moments after dawn. They carefully consider the applicants lined up outside their metal gates. They choose one or two sorry-looking individuals and set them to an honest morning’s work. The lucky ones (hopefully) clean themselves up, and then start cleaning and chopping peppers, tomatoes and onions, shredding lettuce, stashing buns into steam bins and doing the other things necessary in the push cart business while the vendors eat their breakfasts, drink their coffee and schmooze amongst themselves. By eight in the morning, the vendors are rolling onto the streets and pushing their carts to their designated street corners.
This researcher has never become ill from her regular consumption of New York City street meat. The heat from the carts supposedly kills germs and destroys even the most vile of diseases, and the luckiest of customers find an unexpected protein surprise in their pitas.
There are varying opinions on the safety of eating from vending carts. While there is some cause for concern regarding the ingredients used and the cleanliness of the carts, there may even be a greater cause for concern regarding the preparation of the food before it even hits the streets.
Scene: 4:30 AM in New York’s Clinton (a.k.a. Hell’s Kitchen). The birds are beginning to sing and the hookers are beginning to wind up a night’s work as the bars turn out the last stragglers onto the city streets. The sun barely breaches the tops of the east side skyscrapers when lines of none-too-clean amateur chefs arrive at the garages that house the food carts. The vendors, licensed and unlicensed alike, arrive a few moments after dawn. They carefully consider the applicants lined up outside their metal gates. They choose one or two sorry-looking individuals and set them to an honest morning’s work. The lucky ones (hopefully) clean themselves up, and then start cleaning and chopping peppers, tomatoes and onions, shredding lettuce, stashing buns into steam bins and doing the other things necessary in the push cart business while the vendors eat their breakfasts, drink their coffee and schmooze amongst themselves. By eight in the morning, the vendors are rolling onto the streets and pushing their carts to their designated street corners.
This researcher has never become ill from her regular consumption of New York City street meat. The heat from the carts supposedly kills germs and destroys even the most vile of diseases, and the luckiest of customers find an unexpected protein surprise in their pitas.
