Street Food and Back

What do you do in place of pizza delivery, or any nearby restaurants that serve food you are mildly comforted by when you need a night off of cooking?

You eat Street Food.

Street Food is just what it sounds like: food cooked on, eaten on (found on?) the street. The culture of a Street Food/Night Market area is incredible to experience. It will either disgust and overwhelm you, or make you feel like you've hit some small part of the incredible heart of China. It is not for the faint-hearted... if you care a lot about germs and cleanliness and stuff like that.

Let's go for a short tour. First stop, if you want some shao kao (chinese street barbecue), you fill your little plastic basket with all the skewers of meat, and vegetables, tendons, or quail eggs you desire, then hand them over to your friendly grill master...

Send someone else to hunt down bottles of water from a nearby vendor... lots of them, especially in Sichuan province where the hot in hot is HOT.

Let the kids wander nearby (no ipods, iphones, or personal gaming devices of any kind are needed- there is plenty of butchery and live creatures to keep them entertained for hours) to check out the buckets of shrimp get a rinse, or someone's dinner choice get cleaned and de-scaled, or the small puppy licking up scraps at the feet of your very own grill master.

Maybe shao kao isn't your thing, or you'd like a little something to complement it. Head down a few stalls to your choice of fried rice or noodle vendors. Just pick from a variety of chopped meats and veggies and they will throw them all into the wok and whip you up some fantastic, salty fried something in a matter of no time, all for pennies and a toothy grin.

I'm not promising you the meat has been refrigerated recently, or how many times they wash the wok out between... days or weeks, but we've never been sick and we have always had a good time. If nothing else, for the memories.