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

Along the way, stop at the natural swimming pools at YS Falls, sample Jamaican street food beneath the shaded archway of Bamboo Avenue (don’t skip Middle Quarters’ famous peppered shrimp), and take a dip in the turquoise waters of Bluefields Bay. — Megan Spurrell, Condé Nast Traveler, 13 Nov. 2026

Nine days later, Leyva Aguilar was shot dead while eating at a street food stand in San Pablo, Etla, near Oaxaca. — Press Freedom Desk, Washington Post, 7 Nov. 2026

Like shingara, fuchka is a ubiquitous street food in Bangladesh, and very similar to India’s pani puri. — Bill Addison, Los Angeles Times, 5 Nov. 2026

Hai Hai At this Northeast Minneapolis restaurant, James Beard Award-winning chef-owner Christina Nguyen blends Southeast Asian street food with a jaunt to the tropics. — Kristine Hansen, Travel + Leisure, 5 Nov. 2026

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