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I'm working on my new menu and I have about 3 months or so to develop it.

It's a fine dining restaurant but I've decided to use "Street Food" as my theme.

Does anyone out there have any recipes they can share or even food ideas without recipes that you have experience during your travels?

I'm looking for food items that you would typically find at street vendor booths. There seems to be lots of resources for Asian street food but not too many when it comes to the Caribbean or Central/South American and other places.

Any help would be appreciated.

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anything on a stick, and anything fried, including icecream and mars bars.

meat pes, served in silver mining buckets?? Sorry, I'm having trouble with the fine dining and street food concepts together. Unless you serve the above on white china, I'm not sure how to pull it off, except to high end every aspect of it, down to and including the place settings.

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Here's a sweet one: Banana Turon from the Philippines

Ingredients:

1 bunch of plantains

2 packages of spring roll wrapper

thin slices of jackfruit

1 cup of brown sugar

half a wok of oil

Peel plantains and slice into 1/4 inch slices. Wrap about 2-3 slices in one spring roll wrapper, include 2 slices of jackfruit. Don't forget to sprinkle brown sugar on the slices of plantain and jackfruit before wrapping it with a springroll wrapper. Finish wrapping all the plantains and jackfruit.

Heat the oil until it is medium hot. Dump about 10-12 turons into the oil and fry for half a minute. Sprinkle brown sugar all over the turons and the hot oil will caramelize it and stick it to the rolls. Fry until the turon rolls are brown and drain.

For plating it I suggest you cut the banana turon in half at an angle and serve with a caramel sauce.

Edited by Domestic Goddess (log)

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

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Think of jazzing up street food with high end ingredients like Sam Etheridge from Ambrozia in Albuquerque does. He makes "Lobster Corn Dogs". Or like the "Duck, Duck, Duck Burger" they used to serve at the Anaconda Bar in Taos. An amazing 18 buck burger made with confit and duck breast with a stash of foie in the center, served with caramelized onions and white truffle fries.

I think the trick is to keep it delicious and not too gimmiky.

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I'd rather hope that someone wishing to open a restaurant based on street food was doing so based on their experience and love of such foods, and plenty of research.

Without that, it is already sounding gimmicky.

I love animals.

They are delicious.

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How about Doubles? They are a typical street vendor item found in Trinidad. Basically fried flat bread with a chick pea mixture in the middle. Here is a recipe for you..Doubles I just did a search on the net for it, so I can't vouch for this recipe.

Don't waste your time or time will waste you - Muse

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I'd rather hope that someone wishing to open a restaurant based on street food was doing so based on their experience and love of such foods, and plenty of research.

Without that, it is already sounding gimmicky.

First of all, I'm not opening a restaurant based on street food.

My restaurant has been open for many years and is very well established.

The menu changes completely quarterly.

I chose the street food theme because I have eaten street food on six different countries and I love it. I hardly consider this to be a "gimmick" and I doubt my clients will either.

I see nothing wrong with doing research outside of one's own experience when developing a menu.

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I really enjoy the street foods of Brazil. Pastels and coxinhas. In the Boson area, the Brazilian bakeries still sell these items and do well. I don't have any of their recipes, but this website should give you some ideas.

http://www.cookbrazil.com/ and click on Party Foods

http://www.cookbrazil.com/pastel.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuisine_of_Brazil interesting reading

And Northeast Brazil, Bahia, has seafood based street foods, but I don't have any information I can post electronically. Maybe you can check some Brazilian cookbooks or other websites.

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Nice links Lyndel. Thank You.

Kerry, I like the socca.

Do you know if they have any traditional fillings for it or is it just served with black pepper?

Just pepper is my experience.

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As mentioned earlier..Doubles are KILLER when done right. Another thing you see in the Caribbean are roasted corn vendors..a deep dark roasted corn cob on a stick.

Just curous...are you looking to "play" on these street foods w/ a more upscale ingriedient and presentation? Or will you be serving as you get it from a vendor??

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Everybody loves the street foods of Mexico, like enchiladas, tamales, and tacos, and they can be dressed up with fancy ingredients without suffering at all.

For example, a duck tamale, or lobster enchiladas, or a fish taco with huitlacoche and a cream sauce.

Edited to add: The best tacos are tacos lengua. Buy some Wagyu beef tongue from D'A and make tacos out of that! I feel inspired to do so myself, actually.

Edited by bleachboy (log)

Don Moore

Nashville, TN

Peace on Earth

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In Chicago there is a decidedly gimmicky place called Hot Dougs (hotdougs.com). He changes his specials daily. Being from New Orleans I am particularly fond of his alligator sausage dog. I check his daily specials for inspiration.

And back home there was a guy who had shrimp tamales every Friday, ta die fa.

Good Luck!

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I can help with south american street food, but some ingredients might be hard to find. Let's see:

1. Anticuchos, which are basically kebabs, made with heart (and I don't mean courrage) and served with a special sauce made with panca (peruvian chili)

2. Empanadas, all kinds of empanadas: cheese, seafood, meat, mushroom... my favorite: salteñas. These are bolivian empanadas made with collagen, so that the end result is soup trapped in a savory pastry. Good stuff.

3. Fried dumplins made with corn or yuca flour or, even better, plantain (which is cooked and then mashed into a paste) stuffed with "chicharron" or cheese or both

4. Salchipapas, basically fried potatoes paired with sausage and served in a paper bag with toothpicks (good, but I don't know if apt for a restaurant)

5. Anything mexican, from tamales to tacos. Anything "al pastor"

6. There's a lot of sandwiches in south america. If you think you can add them, somehow, to your menus, I'll be happy to let you know. But many times when I think of street food in Bolivia, Ecuador, Chile and Peru, I think of the typical sandwich you grab before lunch of after hours, stumbling back from the bars.

I hope this list was helpful. I'll try to remember some more unusual foods and post again.

Follow me @chefcgarcia

Fábula, my restaurant in Santiago, Chile

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Fish and chips may lend itself to some interestng variatons.

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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As mentioned earlier..Doubles are KILLER when done right. Another thing you see in the Caribbean are roasted corn vendors..a deep dark roasted corn cob on a stick.

  Just curous...are you looking to "play" on these street foods w/ a more upscale ingriedient and presentation? Or will you be serving as you get it from a vendor??

The doubles definately look good. They are on the short list.

I want to be as true to the native preparation of all foods on the menu as possible.

I will have to use a little poetic license on some items to make them fit into an a la carte menu theme.

I already had the grilled corn on the cob on my list. Had some spicy corn from a vendor in Jamaica and loved it.

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Everybody loves the street foods of Mexico, like enchiladas, tamales, and tacos, and they can be dressed up with fancy ingredients without suffering at all.

For example, a duck tamale, or lobster enchiladas, or a fish taco with huitlacoche and a cream sauce.

Edited to add:  The best tacos are tacos lengua.  Buy some Wagyu beef tongue from D'A and make tacos out of that!  I feel inspired to do so myself, actually.

Mexican and South West foods will figure heavily I think.

Mainly because the flavors would be and easier sell around here.

I love tamales but I can't figure out a way to work them into "fine dining" without looking cumbersome on a plate.

Soft tacos are a definate possibility.

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- hawaiian huli huli chicken is a famous roadside staple that should adapt well

- cheesesteaks from the philly area of course

I like the huli huli chicken. That should be easy to adapt.

Cheese steaks on the other hand might be a bit more of a challenge.

Perhaps a modified beef tenderloin on a pastry base.

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