Street Food and its Reflection on Cultural Diversity in Asia
Published 08/14/2024 in Scholar Travel Stipend
Written
by Ted Zhu |
08/14/2024
The Milken Institute’s mission is to advance the world’s progress on discovering the path to meaningful life for those in developing countries and prepare the world for what’s coming next. I can’t say that I brought anything incrementally valuable to the people in the countries that I visited, but I certainly left with an hugely increased appreciation and understanding for the community and cultural dynamics that street food ties together.
In February and March of this year, I embarked on a journey to visit Asia for the first time as an adult. I had last visited China (my parents’ home country), when I was about 4 years old. Since then, I’ve never found an opportunity to get to explore really anywhere in the continent save a few days in southern Turkey, which was at the very end of Silk Road. It would be an understatement for me to say that I was excited to get to traverse through Singapore, Bangkok, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo with my friends.
I may be biased, but I find food often to be the top thing I look forward to when I travel. Not just any food, but street food in particular I've always found to be so interesting. While fancy restaurants undoubtedly serve great food and wow you with the high quality ingredients or day-long preparation needed to surprise you in new ways, there's something inimitable about street food. Every time I visit street stalls, I know I may be risking a bit of an unknown — but I also know that I'm getting such a unique opportunity and privilege to participate in the ritual of everyday life of the place that I'm visiting.
It's such a powerful mix — you get a feel for what life can be like, you get to be connected to people of all backgrounds who can enjoy a good and affordable bite, and you get such an interesting peek into the history that has shaped why this food has become such a core part of life. To me, street food is a perfect little bundle of chaos that just somehow makes sense. I had amazing experiences trying street food in the US, where world-class Mexican food reigns supreme, and in a variety of countries where I really got to taste flavors from across the Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Egypt) but I was excited to see what it would be like on the other side of the world.
When I landed at Singapore, my first stop on the trip, I left the airport and immediately went to the one and only Lua Pa Sat. Lau Pa Sat is Singapore’s oldest market structure on the island, having been first built starting in 1823 and officially became a hawker center in 1973. Lau Pa Sat’s place, organization, and design immediately stood out to me.
For one, I had always thought of street food in Asia as being literally on the street with small stalls and vendors crowded haphazardly along the streets. The term “street” itself implies a level of organization, process, or hygiene even really that is less stringent . Perhaps shattering my own stereotypes of a vast, diverse continent from which I could vaguely claim heritage but had never really known, I was honestly really surprised to see how organized Lau Pa Sat was despite its scale. Each vendor had its own unique mini-kitchen setup, labeled with a numbering system that helped patrons navigate, and shared a dish/cutlery system across the complex that could be put away together. The closest parallel to what I had seen before would be the TimeOut Market in Brookyln, except with at least 3x the number of vendors and people. It blew me away that this scale of market was so clean — and according to Google Maps, was not at all a unique phenomenon as at least 3 other large hawker centers existed within a 10 minute walk from where I was.
Since I knew I only had 1 night in Singapore, I tried as much as my stomach could handle — Hokkien Mee (literally “Fujianese noodles”) which was fired up in front of me in a wok that had to be at least 2.5 feet wide, Singaporean laksa which had a distinctly sweeter taste from coconut milk which isn’t as present in Malaysian or Indonesian versions, Char Kwai Teow, and an oyster omelette.
As I left Lau Pa Sat that night, I thought about how I had probably never really seen such a vast gathering place of street food vendors, with the diversity of tourists, young couples, high school cliques, extended family gatherings, and well-dress clusters of elegant young couples out on town, anywhere in the cities I’ve lived in the US. Tucked between the towering global headquarters of Bytedance and banks on one side, and a Barry’s Bootcamp on the other, it felt incredibly unique to see such a juxtaposition. I realized that this wasn’t just a place for people to eat but to gather. In the US cities I’ve been to, this affordability, scale, and accessibility to a place of community for everyone felt exceptionally rare.
Bangkok was next for me, and I went on a food tour as soon I landed that took me through the winding alleys of the Yaowarat. Immediately it reminded me a bit of my childhood. Street food for me growing up in LA was going to the local taco truck. I have vivid memories of crowding with my high school friends or my brother-in-law (one of the world’s great taco fanatics), double-fisting fish, carnitas, and cabeza tacos into my mouth, as we angled for a spot on any open bench we could find or bent our car’s creaky sun visors down to protect us from the blaring dry heat of a Los Angeles summer.
The incredibly harsh beatdown from the sun in Bangkok certainly reminded me of those same Los Angeles summers, but more than that, I could see and understand much more tangibly how movement of people and cultures influenced street food. Southern California’s incredibly diverse immigrant population, especially from Mexico, brings with it an explosion of flavors and dishes that dominate our palate. Variations deriving from different regions or countries and adaptations incorporating “Americanized” taste or fusion Asian flavors dotted the landscape in LA.
In Bangkok, I saw an amazing parallel to that. In so many dishes, I tasted distinctly familiar Chinese flavors I grew up eating that underscored classic Bangkok staples. Kanom Gui Chai was a crispy-on-the-outside, sticky-on-the-side chive pancake that tasted like a mochi/sticky rice version of my mom’s chive pockets, which originates from my family’s hometown of Shandong. Thai sukiyaki was a variation of Chinese hotpot, with its meat and vegetables in a light broth tasting like a cozy family night during winter, accompanied by a pink dipping sauce full of bolder spicy/sweet flavors more commonly associated with Thai cuisine. As I ducked beneath the awnings of some store front, I saw the same incense and joss paper on sale that my family brought out at funerals and commemorations for ancestors.
In February and March of this year, I embarked on a journey to visit Asia for the first time as an adult. I had last visited China (my parents’ home country), when I was about 4 years old. Since then, I’ve never found an opportunity to get to explore really anywhere in the continent save a few days in southern Turkey, which was at the very end of Silk Road. It would be an understatement for me to say that I was excited to get to traverse through Singapore, Bangkok, Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo with my friends.
I may be biased, but I find food often to be the top thing I look forward to when I travel. Not just any food, but street food in particular I've always found to be so interesting. While fancy restaurants undoubtedly serve great food and wow you with the high quality ingredients or day-long preparation needed to surprise you in new ways, there's something inimitable about street food. Every time I visit street stalls, I know I may be risking a bit of an unknown — but I also know that I'm getting such a unique opportunity and privilege to participate in the ritual of everyday life of the place that I'm visiting.
It's such a powerful mix — you get a feel for what life can be like, you get to be connected to people of all backgrounds who can enjoy a good and affordable bite, and you get such an interesting peek into the history that has shaped why this food has become such a core part of life. To me, street food is a perfect little bundle of chaos that just somehow makes sense. I had amazing experiences trying street food in the US, where world-class Mexican food reigns supreme, and in a variety of countries where I really got to taste flavors from across the Mediterranean (Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Egypt) but I was excited to see what it would be like on the other side of the world.
When I landed at Singapore, my first stop on the trip, I left the airport and immediately went to the one and only Lua Pa Sat. Lau Pa Sat is Singapore’s oldest market structure on the island, having been first built starting in 1823 and officially became a hawker center in 1973. Lau Pa Sat’s place, organization, and design immediately stood out to me.
For one, I had always thought of street food in Asia as being literally on the street with small stalls and vendors crowded haphazardly along the streets. The term “street” itself implies a level of organization, process, or hygiene even really that is less stringent . Perhaps shattering my own stereotypes of a vast, diverse continent from which I could vaguely claim heritage but had never really known, I was honestly really surprised to see how organized Lau Pa Sat was despite its scale. Each vendor had its own unique mini-kitchen setup, labeled with a numbering system that helped patrons navigate, and shared a dish/cutlery system across the complex that could be put away together. The closest parallel to what I had seen before would be the TimeOut Market in Brookyln, except with at least 3x the number of vendors and people. It blew me away that this scale of market was so clean — and according to Google Maps, was not at all a unique phenomenon as at least 3 other large hawker centers existed within a 10 minute walk from where I was.
Since I knew I only had 1 night in Singapore, I tried as much as my stomach could handle — Hokkien Mee (literally “Fujianese noodles”) which was fired up in front of me in a wok that had to be at least 2.5 feet wide, Singaporean laksa which had a distinctly sweeter taste from coconut milk which isn’t as present in Malaysian or Indonesian versions, Char Kwai Teow, and an oyster omelette.
As I left Lau Pa Sat that night, I thought about how I had probably never really seen such a vast gathering place of street food vendors, with the diversity of tourists, young couples, high school cliques, extended family gatherings, and well-dress clusters of elegant young couples out on town, anywhere in the cities I’ve lived in the US. Tucked between the towering global headquarters of Bytedance and banks on one side, and a Barry’s Bootcamp on the other, it felt incredibly unique to see such a juxtaposition. I realized that this wasn’t just a place for people to eat but to gather. In the US cities I’ve been to, this affordability, scale, and accessibility to a place of community for everyone felt exceptionally rare.
Bangkok was next for me, and I went on a food tour as soon I landed that took me through the winding alleys of the Yaowarat. Immediately it reminded me a bit of my childhood. Street food for me growing up in LA was going to the local taco truck. I have vivid memories of crowding with my high school friends or my brother-in-law (one of the world’s great taco fanatics), double-fisting fish, carnitas, and cabeza tacos into my mouth, as we angled for a spot on any open bench we could find or bent our car’s creaky sun visors down to protect us from the blaring dry heat of a Los Angeles summer.
The incredibly harsh beatdown from the sun in Bangkok certainly reminded me of those same Los Angeles summers, but more than that, I could see and understand much more tangibly how movement of people and cultures influenced street food. Southern California’s incredibly diverse immigrant population, especially from Mexico, brings with it an explosion of flavors and dishes that dominate our palate. Variations deriving from different regions or countries and adaptations incorporating “Americanized” taste or fusion Asian flavors dotted the landscape in LA.
In Bangkok, I saw an amazing parallel to that. In so many dishes, I tasted distinctly familiar Chinese flavors I grew up eating that underscored classic Bangkok staples. Kanom Gui Chai was a crispy-on-the-outside, sticky-on-the-side chive pancake that tasted like a mochi/sticky rice version of my mom’s chive pockets, which originates from my family’s hometown of Shandong. Thai sukiyaki was a variation of Chinese hotpot, with its meat and vegetables in a light broth tasting like a cozy family night during winter, accompanied by a pink dipping sauce full of bolder spicy/sweet flavors more commonly associated with Thai cuisine. As I ducked beneath the awnings of some store front, I saw the same incense and joss paper on sale that my family brought out at funerals and commemorations for ancestors.
As I started looking up the demographics of Thailand, it started to make more sense to me. While on the surface few Thai people have Chinese surnames, it was estimated that approximately ⅙ of Thai-identifying people were of Chinese origin from centuries of immigration. A royal decree in 1920 replaced their surnames with Thai names, hiding (at least to a foreigner like me) the surface of the melting pot. Chinatown/Yaowarat was Bangkok’s major commercial hub in the late 19th/early 20th century and made for an exceptional combination of Thai and Chinese cultures and flavors. Street food here reflected an inimitable part of local culture that was unique to this meeting of cultures, where flavors came together to build something new.
Here in a distinctly foreign land yet surrounded by flavors that tasted like my childhood, I appreciated more than ever that our world is ever-changing and our ties to each other are closer than we often think.
Sources:
- “Our Heritage”. https://www.laupasat.sg/our-heritage/
- Barbara A. West (2009), Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania, Facts on File, p. 794
- Sirisrisak, Tiamsoon. “The Urban Development and Heritage Contestation of Bangkok’s Chinatown.” University of California Press, 2015, pp. 168–185.