EATING ON THE STREET

When Jerry and I returned from Istanbul in 1993 we moved into a wonderful rental house in a lovely old part of Santa Ana. The neighborhood, which was in the process of being gentrified, had mostly old Victorian houses and early 1900’s bungalows. Sometime in the past as other houses had fallen into disrepair they had been replaced with somewhat unsightly apartments. As Santa Ana began feeling the influx of immigrants from Mexico, these apartments became full to overflowing with people.

Overall, though, we felt the neighborhood with its jacaranda-lined streets was relatively safe and we loved the little house we rented on Lacey street. What we liked best was a result of the Mexican influence: the vendor carts being pushed through the neighborhood selling all manners of tasty goodies. This is where Jerry and I learned just how delicious corn-on-the-cob purchased off these carts tasted. Instead of slathering the cob with butter, salt and pepper, it was thoroughly brushed with mayonnaise, rolled in grated parmesan cheese (or a reasonably facsimile!) and then sprinkled with red pepper flakes. Having once tasted corn fixed that way, we never again went back to the old way of eating them.


Perhaps a year after we moved in, the residents of Santa Ana were getting really miffed about the influx of “illegals,” and to be honest with you, about the only way they could effect any change at all was for the health department to create an ordinance that kept all food vendors off the streets. I understood the rationale from a health standpoint, but in the two years we lived in Istanbul we learned to eat all kinds of things off vendor carts.

Providing food in this way is part of the whole system of getting working people fed in big cities. Istanbul was not a city where every family had a car, so much of the food shopping was done at little mom and pop places or perhaps at a little stall called a “bufe.” Also, every day at about 2 p.m. a stakebed truck full of watermelons stopped in front of our apartment, which was on a relatively busy but quite narrow street. The sides of the truck were taken down and wonderful ripe watermelons were sold for a pittance. Everything came to market ripe and was intended to be eaten immediately. In the hot summer months, with the humidity almost drowning a person with each intake of breath, those melons sold out fast day after day.


Often we’d see vendors walking around in the city selling food from a pushcart. The picture below is one I took in the town of Konya in Central Anatolia. This young fellow was selling tangerines grown locally and bananas which of course were imported.


Bananas were easily had everywhere, and my favorite dessert, called “Formul” used them. A banana was sliced onto a plate and drizzled heavily with honey This was topped by a big dollop of unsweetened whipped cream and then sprinkled with finely ground nuts. The sweet honey was balanced by the kaymak. The smoothness of the banana was balanced with the texture of the nuts. It was a wonderful, natural dessert and I couldn’t eat enough of it. Who would have thought that my favorite Turkish dish was made with bananas!

Because we ate so much “off the street” in Istanbul and then found such a delicious offering from a street vendor in our own California neighborhood, we were very sorry to see the Mexican corn-on-the-cob vendors get moved out of Southern California.

There is a bunch of chatter on the internet about the loss of these and other kinds of food vendors. But if you have ever been in LA and driven past “Pinks” on north La Brea you will see that although we don’t so much embrace the little one-man food carts, to some small degree we have some “bufe” type eateries here too. The line waiting for a Pink’s hot dog often is 25 to 30 people deep. Pinks is a true take-out place. You stand on the sidewalk, place your order and walk away eating your hot dog.

That’s not so different from how it is done in Turkey – and in Mexico!