Street food vs. Restaurant food, what you need to know

A lot of people are very wary of eating street food, thinking it is definitely where they are going to get food poisoning. Yes, you can get food poisoning, but you can also very well get it in a restaurant too.

Street Food

Street food lets you know the culture of a place quickly. This is what most locals eat more often than not. Now I don’t mean that you shouldn’t go to restaurants but I think a good mix between street food and restaurants is what you should aim for.

It doesn’t have to be scary. Street food doesn’t just entail coming from a street cart or something like that…it can also be a food truck or a small takeaway shop. These also have some amazing food that you wouldn’t want to miss out on.

There are some ways to be more cautious when you are eating street food to help you choose the best ones. First you want to look for places with a line up. You know that the food is getting cooked and turned over a lot faster than places that don’t have a line.

If you go to places that have already cooked the food and it is just waiting to be bought, be careful…ask them to cook you a fresh item if you want what they are selling.

Second, stick to places that only offer a few different items. The more they offer the less fresh most things will be.

Restaurant food

Restaurants are “same same but different”. Most people don’t associate restaurants with food poisoning, but you don’t know how long the food has been sitting in the back kitchen. Since you don’t usually see how they are preparing your food, you can’t really know vs. seeing your food cooked in front of you in some street stalls. So there’s a similar element of risk in both settings.

Like with street food, look for busy restaurants, or at least a handful of people eating in there. Another way to cut down on your risk is ordering what they specialize in as that will be the most ordered and the freshest.

With restaurants, you are more likely to choose a restaurant that caters to tourists instead of locals. This will do two things. First, it will be more costly than a restaurant that locals go to. Second, the food will usually not be of any superior quality.

When you do choose where to eat, do some research before you leave to find out some great spots where locals go along with travelers in the know. This will leave you with a much more stress free way of deciding on where you should eat.

No matter where you eat, listen to your body. If you are getting a bad feeling while eating something, listen, and stop eating it, and get food somewhere else.

Check out my other article on how to save money on food and drink while travelling.

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