Global Street Food

I realize this is not news. If you've seen Bourdain in Singapore or read any Southeast Asian food blog ever, you know that chicken rice is among the greatest global street foods ever whipped up, and Tian Tian at Singapore's famed Maxwell Hawker Center is most certainly where it's at. I went in a skeptic, and came out an evangelist. My life will never be the same. 

As far as crunchy, savory snacks go, American culture is woefully lacking. Everything's breaded, deep-fried and too heavy for hot weather. Enter chaat, the only recipe I can think of that fully addresses every major flavor: salty, sweet, sour, savory and umami. Junoon's Aliya LeeKong shows us how to make it. 

I tell myself this every time I go to India: wait until the last day to eat street food, if you absolutely have to. Well I absolutely had to and I was unable to wait until the last day. There were a few contributors to my mild affliction — questionable straws in my otherwise reliably sterile coconut water, ice of dubious origin in my gin and Limca, a newspaper cone of peanuts, chilis, onions and tomatoes from a vendor with one foot — and then there was the pani puri.