10 Best Street Foods to Eat (If You Dare)

This cherished Indian street food is a minor kind of performance art: A walla, or vendor, plucks a crispy puff of fried flour, pokes a hole in it, and stuffs it with chick pea and potato and a dollop of sweet and tangy spiced water. Your gol gappa walla will dish out one after another until you’re sated.

Gol gappa can be a typhoidal crap shoot, so make sure your vaccination’s up to date; there's a market for high-end gol gappa from guys who (claim to) use only mineral water. There's also a truly upscale option: Gol gappa have recently been reinvented by some restaurants, which perch the pre-stuffed shell atop a shot glass full of vodka—definitely safer than water.

Mexicans are cuckoo for huitlacoche, a bluish fungus that grows on ears of corn. While it has been viewed with considerable apprehension by U.S. corn growers (who call it “corn smut”), it’s been revered south of the border since Aztec times.

When cooked, huitlacoche has an earthy flavor redolent of wild mushrooms, with a black inkiness; it is traditionally folded with cheese into a tortilla to make a quesadilla the size of sombrero.

If you’re on a quest to give your foodie friends a culinary comeuppance, Walkie Talkies may be the ticket. Chicken feet and heads are marinated and then grilled on wire mesh over hot coals and served up with peri-peri pepper sauce or made into curry. A roadside staple in the townships, Walkie Talkies are rumored to have aphrodisiacal effects. Indulge at your own risk.

Originally from the city of Xi’an, the ancient capital of China and home to the famed terracotta warriors, roujiamo are medieval-looking pulled-pork sandwiches that will bring tears to your eyes. Pork that looks like it’s been stewing in its own juices since the Ming dynasty is plucked out of a bubbling cauldron, shredded with a cleaver on a massive wood stump that looks like it’s been in service since the Tang dynasty, and then tucked into a chewy wheat bun.

It can be a little intimidating to eat off the street on a 98-degree day, but if you’re the kind of person who likes pulled pork, this will knock your socks off. To find it, listen for the call of a vendor yodeling the classic tongue twister, “Bai ji la zhi roujiamo!”

Should you ever find yourself in search of a bite to eat in the vast, desert-covered former Soviet republic of Turkmenistan, go for the shashlik. While it’s true that the global Shishkebab Belt is wide, there’s something extra-special about the grilled lamb skewers here.

Locals swear that the only shashlik worth the name is grilled over the embers of the saxaul bush, which has been so voraciously harvested that it’s now endangered in some places. It’s a safe bet that a market in certified saxaul-free shashlik for those travelers who like to offset their carbon footprint can’t be far off.

Sure, you could indulge in one of Iceland’s hardcore delicacies like fermented shark or split sheep’s heads. But do you really want to? That’s why the Icelandic hot dog was invented. Made primarily from lamb, the hotdog is generously topped with ketchup, Pylsusinnep Icelandic mustard, remoulade, and onions. Order a fistful, and leave the svid and kaetur hakarl for the locals.

Sour sausage is a staple of northern Thailand. It’s fermented with sticky rice for several days, mixed with spices like Thai chili, grilled, and added to everything from fried rice to soup. Though it sounds daring, the process has been done for thousands of years.

A staple food for long-haul African truckers, the Rolex is a sort of breakfast burrito whose name is a bastardization of “rolled eggs.” They're cooked with tomato, onion, and cabbage, and served in a flat bread called chapati. The concoction is rolled up and delivered to the customer wrapped in newspaper.

Taiwan’s night markets are truly great institutions, with an endless variety of food and great people-watching. If there’s one emblem of the night market, it’s skewers of pig’s blood cake. Made of sticky rice mixed with pig’s blood and then seasoned, this cake can look positively terrifying in the hands of a 14-year-old Taiwanese school girl. If swine blood isn’t exactly your cup of tea, don’t worry: You’ll find a million other delicacies on offer, from bubble tea to green papaya salad.

Not nearly as disgusting as they sound, spit cakes are a class of traditional pastries cooked on rotisseries. One popular variety is Trdelník, which is made from dough wrapped around a spit and grilled, then topped with sugar and walnuts. Though they’re often cooked over gas flames, locals insist that the real deal is cooked over charcoal, which lends it a delicately smoky fragrance.