street food

noun

plural street foods

: prepared food of a kind that is typically sold to customers on a street or sidewalk and that is often designed to be carried and eaten while walking

Pizza is quintessentially a street food: a quick lunch or a quick snack often eaten standing up or on the go.

—Don Lesser

Traditionally eaten as street food, empanadas are ideal for snacking on the go but are just as satisfying to sit down to for a simple dinner.

—Melissa Roberts and Maggie Ruggiero

Satays, which are skewered and grilled morsels of beef, fish, chicken, pork, or vegetables, are street food in Southeast Asia, devoured day and night with gusto.

—Karen MacNeil

Examples of street food in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Chickpea-Chicken Salad With Green Harissa Dressing Image In this filling salad, chickpeas are seasoned with a blend of cumin, sweet paprika and chile powder that’s found in a Moroccan street food snack. —Isobel Whitcomb, New York Times, 10 Feb. 2025

What to expect: Colorful performances, a market and traditional music along with family-friendly activities and plenty of authentic street food at the Far East Center. —Axios Denver, Axios, 31 Jan. 2025

Instead, consider picking up simit (a Turkish-style bagel and popular street food) from a street seller and enjoying it on the banks of the Bosphorus. —Kaitlyn McInnis, Forbes, 22 Jan. 2025

Downstairs, the masses munched street food and made a party of their search for the guts of this night's glory. —Michael Barnes, Austin American-Statesman, 29 Dec. 2024

Word History

First Known Use

1860, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for street food

• accrued
• allude
• collude
• conclude
• construed
• debuted
• delude
• elude
• endued
• ensued
• eschewed
• etude

Kids Definition

street food

noun

: prepared food of a kind that is typically sold to customers on a street or sidewalk and that is often designed to be carried and eaten while walking