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

At Botiwalla in Optimist Hall, the malai chicken, marinated in cream, ginger, garlic, yogurt, and cardamom — among many other Indian street food menu items — puts these spices front and center. —Sunny Hubler, Charlotte Observer, 5 Jan. 2026

The Orange Bowl used to do that when the Orange Bowl Stadium sat where the current loanDepot park now sits, and the official NHL pregame area smoked with lechon and another foods where unofficial street food vendors once fed sports fans in the area’s January football days. —David J. Neal, Miami Herald, 3 Jan. 2026

And Jack & Jenny’s, was their pop-up food truck by the pool, which offers creative street food. —Kimberly Wilson, Essence, 1 Jan. 2026

Billing itself as Concord’s first-ever chai cafe, the establishment brews various teas and has a menu of street food popular in Pakistan and India, ranging from samosas to masala fries to chicken-tikka wraps. —John Metcalfe, Mercury News, 30 Dec. 2025

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