So, what are we eating?
Fast, cheap and very, very tasty...
Salty, crispy. What's not to like?
It's all over.
The food on the street, I mean, everybody eats it.
And I do want to eat that.
That throbbing missile of love.
And this, I'm all over it.
Oh, this is gonna be good for his hungoverness.
Believe me.
I'm gonna eat my way across town, trailer to trailer,
until they find me in a quivering,
semiconscious heap somewhere,
wondering, "What the hell happened?"
Ooh, that's gonna go straight to my hips.
But in the meantime, enjoy the street food while you can.
Mm. That's nice. What's next?
I'm Anthony Bourdain.
♪ That's right ♪
I write, I travel, I eat...
♪ Aw, look out now ♪
...and I'm hungry for more.
♪ Ugh! ♪
♪ You got to ♪
♪ Get lost ♪
♪ No reservations ♪
Street food is king.
Now, that looks good.
From a cart on a corner, rough additions
to existing restaurants and businesses,
or just a grill under a tarp.
Head for the streets if you're looking for the good stuff.
I mean, there's a lot of pretty food on this street,
brightly colored.
This is a typical example
of how we don't care about where we eat,
as long as the food is good.
I mean, we sit by the roadside...
- Mm-hmm. - By trains, you know,
stray dogs and cats wandering around...
- Yeah. - Petrol fumes...
Yeah.
...mixed with the chili and lard.
I don't know.
I think I've crossed a line somewhere,
because this is exactly the environment I like to eat in.
Also, I'm a big fan of sitting on these things.
The perfect restaurant should have these.
The town of San Antonio, known far and wide
for its somewhat legendary roadside stands
specializing in deep-fried pig parts.
A perfect respite for the hungry traveler in need.
I arrive at sundown to meet a pal, Juan Jose.
How you doing, brother?
Hey, Tony. Good to see you.
So, what are we eating? It smells good here.
It's like a typical country place.
This is basically all made from pork.
These are the ears of the pork...
- Uh-huh. - ...heart, liver.
Here, we have Chinchurria.
The main attraction... A Spanish peasant dish
dating back to, like, forever.
They cut that with scissors.
Oh, yeah.
Chinchurria, the business end of lower intestine,
deep-fried till crispy and much loved by locals.
So, this is, like, a snack or a meal?
It would be a snack.
Okay. Here Chinchurria.
Gracias.
Yeah, I'm liking these.
It's very snack-y.
All I could do was quote the great poet who said,
"Love hath pitched his tent in the place of excrement."
This place is really famous
because this thing here, Chinchurria.
Really? This place right here?
This town, San Antonio Pereda, this place.
What's that, like, inside?
Oh, there we go. Nice.
Is that a good thing?
Salty, crispy. What's not to like?
And, of course, no meal would be complete
without a powerful starch component,
namely an arepa, a tasty cornmeal cake,
in this case topped with queso fresco
and drizzled with condensed milk.
Oh, there's cheese inside, too, huh?
Good. I like the cheese here.
And for dessert...
Let's try a pig's ear.
Unable to resist the opportunity
to torment my semi-vegetarian
and fully squeamish producer, Tom...
He likes... Yo gusto.
Yo quiero pig ear.
That one looks good. Oh, good.
So they cut it up, and then they fry it.
Ah, gracias.
The texture's pretty much what you'd expect,
somewhere between fried sneaker and oven-dried Trojan,
not that I'd know, mind you.
Oh, Tom's gonna love this. Tom?
For some, I guess, an acquired taste.
So the further out it goes, the better it is.
It's good.
I can't hear you, Tom.
Anywhere you go in the world
where there's an enlightened food culture,
you find someone on a street
selling pig parts and beer.
Cheers to that. Cheers, man.
Love it here.
Tom, some more ears?
Ladies, thank you. Gracias. Good stuff.
Red Hills Road is a busy artery at any time of day,
linking downtown Kingston
to the relatively prosperous Red Hills Community.
But the night brings out
a particular kind of entrepreneur,
an artist... an artisan, really,
whose products have an appeal
that transcends all divisions in Jamaican society.
It's called drum-pan chicken
for the grills made from 55-gallon oil drums,
and the stuff itself
is that Jamaican classic... Jerk chicken.
Basically, you see something like this
all over the Caribbean to one extent or another.
Concepts all too familiar to staff reporter
for the "Jamaica Gleaner," Robert Lalah.
What's special about Jamaican style?
Well, we're known for our spices,
and the whole spice of the chicken jerk,
it's very well seasoned, and we're known for that.
A wonderfully mutated descendant of the seasonings
once used for dried jerky, the jerk in jerk chicken
refers to the blend of spices,
usually including cinnamon, clove,
scallion, nutmeg, thyme and garlic,
but always Scotch Bonnet peppers
and the nearly omnipresent allspice,
a peppercorn-type spice known locally as pimento.
Well, okay.
I'm definitely gonna need some of this.
Let's see, uh...
Oh, beautiful. Good. Good. Good.
All right.
This is one of Robert's
favorite drum-pan chicken stands,
but with dozens of similar operations
out on a good night, competition is tough.
That looks awful juicy.
So, you think your chicken is better
than anybody else out?
- Yeah? - Yeah.
What makes it number one?
What's so... what's special about your chicken?
- And fresh herbs. - Ingredients.
- Right. - Right.
So I'll tell you, you're cooking
that chicken just right, too, man.
It's nice.
As elsewhere in the Caribbean,
you pull right up in your car and order up.
The guys behind you... Let 'em wait.
So, everybody eats here... Rich or poor?
Everybody comes here.
It's very popular on a Friday night
and on a Saturday night.
People actually leave their homes, get dressed up
and come out there by the cars on the side of the road,
come here and get the chicken.
You eat it in the street, or you take it home with you?
Uh, depends. If there's no rain, they stand up right here
and eat it hot. That's the thing.
They like to get it very hot and fresh.
- Right. - So they eat it on the spot.
I've had a decent amount of grilled chicken
around the Caribbean over the years, but tasting this,
I get what all the talk is about.
Fresh herb over dried,
nice, moist, properly and freshly cooked chicken
makes all the difference in the world.
Yeah, man's proud of his chicken.
And I'll tell you, it's cooked really, really nicely.
68 miles south of Tijuana,
the road takes you to Ensenada.
Oh, man.
I've been hearing about this place for ages.
Many say it's the best street cart in the world.
Javier, a local restaurateur, shows me
to an unimposing-looking cart on a corner.
You wouldn't know anything is special about it
at first glance
other than maybe the unusually large selection
of brightly colored salsas and garnishes on the counter...
...and the crowd of blissed-out-looking locals.
Define for those who don't know.
Tostada is a flat, toasted tortilla...
Correct.
...With stuff on top?
With stuff on top. Only seafood here.
They have a famous tostada
with the clam and sea urchin.
It's like Le Bernardin quality seafood in the street.
♪ No reservations ♪
What do you recommend here?
Should I be putting salsa on this?
Yeah.
Wow.
They are not messing around here, are they?
Wow. That's really good.
On a spread of fresh sea urchin,
Pismo clam, a wash of lime, chili sauce,
avocado, toasted peanuts with garden chilis.
It's like Le Bernardin quality seafood in the street.
Wow. Sauce is good, too.
Whoa.
Wow!
Fresh scallop and sea snail, fresh purple onion,
a dash of sea salt, a splash of lime, more chili sauce.
Whew. It's good.
I mean, it's shockingly good.
A thick slather of salt cod with olives, onion, tomato,
chilis and abuelita sauce made from chile Guajon.
That's intensely pleasurable.
And then she dresses it really well.
It's got just enough heat.
All right. One last one, pulpo.
Octopus...
diced and placed on a pillow of red-snapper ceviche,
lime and salt, squeeze of chili sauce, avocado.
Is that all right, or what?
All right?
You know, how do you describe this for an audience?
The delicate interplay between crunch and acid,
freshness and spice.
I mean, this is some
sophisticated food here.
This woman is a genius.
New Orleans' born-and-raised Wendell Pierce.
Maybe you know him as the awesome Bunk
from "The Wire" or Antoine Batiste on "Treme."
In real life...
You're very involved in a lot of preservation,
promoting a cultural heritage in New Orleans,
the Jazz Tour.
- Yes. - Why here?
What was going on there?
This building right here, this is the hallowed ground.
This is the Eagle Saloon.
This is where Buddy Bolden played
and Kid Ory and Jelly Roll Morton.
Both food and music are about communication.
They're telling you about themselves
and where they come from... Right.
And there's a story on the plate.
This segues nicely into yaka mein.
Here's my guess... Once upon a time,
some musicians or some cooks or maybe both
were out late after work.
Drunk and suddenly hungry,
as people tend to get in such circumstances,
maybe they dropped by
New Orleans' early Chinatown, scored some noodles.
3:00 in the morning, you heard some good music,
and you drank a lot of good rotgut,
you need a little food in your stomach.
Later, maybe broke-assed and too lazy to go out,
some early innovator tried to re-create the dim memory
of his Chinese noodles with what he had around,
altered and adjusted to more Creole-style tastes.
It's actually like yaka mein, like chow mein,
but folks order and say, "Yakamee."
This is Linda Green.
She is famous for her yaka mein.
A premier vendor of a vital component
of New Orlean's drinking culture.
Outside clubs,
along the sidelines of second-line parades,
wherever her restorative powers are needed,
you'll find her dishing out legendary tonic
from the back of this truck.
I'm surprised that Tony have never had it
because I watches his program, and he's eaten everything.
I really be talking to him on the TV.
I be saying, "You got to eat that.
No. No, eat that."
Oh, this is gonna be good for his hungoverness.
Believe me.
It has another name synonymous with it, is Old Sober.
You want to try it? Yeah, let's do it.
I like the setup, too. That's the setup.
And that's what everybody say. They love the setup.
Couple of tosses back and forth to heat the solids through,
get those flavors marrying up, doing magical
It's noodles, hard-boiled eggs, scallions and meat.
I normally use a boneless chuck roast.
Yeah, people love to put in their hot sauce
and the soy sauce and a sweet sauce sometimes,
and it gives you
the individual choice of livening it up.
Oh, that is good.
You need a little spice, you know,
when you're, uh, when you're sober, huh?
The spice in this, it's just black pepper, huh?
Yes.
That's what you... That's what you...
That's what you gonna openly...
- Tell you. - ...confess to.
You see the black pepper, so you have to give into that.
- Yeah, you have to. - Everything else is a secret.
I can predict without any doubt at all that,
some time in the next decade, there will be
some expensive restaurant in town
selling a $19.95 bowl of deconstructed yaka mein, okay?
It's gonna be enveloped in a glycerin ball.
Right.
But I can also guarantee that whoever's cooking that
and serving it will have
a deep and ferocious love in their heart for this.
Oh, yes.
Anybody who makes anything worth eating
respects their elders.
You know, they respect those who came before.
It should tell you something that the mayor of Denver
is a former restaurateur.
Maybe that helps explain the warm Denver welcome
for this guy... Biker Jim.
Do you like spicy? Do you like buffalo?
I've never had it.
Do you like Southwestern spices?
- Sure. - All right, cool.
- It's really good. - Sounds good.
What's this?
Buffalo, elk and reindeer brats in the street?
Believe me, we got nothing to sneer about
in New York anymore.
Would you like a little caramelized onion?
- No. - Shaved clean, then,
or as we like to say, Brazilian style.
- Hey. You Jim? - I am.
And how are you doing, man? Smells good.
Yeah, I do a bit of chumming around here.
We draw people in by their nose as often as possible.
Yeah, that'll work.
Biker Jim's a former repo man-turned-vendor of fine meats
in tube form.
There are definitely some thrills to be had stealing cars.
But I was ready for something else.
He's handed in his Slim Jim and his pepper spray
for a cream cheese gun.
I've got a rattlesnake-pheasant brat hiding in here
if you wanted to try a little rattlesnake.
♪ No reservations ♪
What's this?
Buffalo, elf and reindeer brats in the street?
- Hey. You Jim? - I am.
And how are you doing, man? Smells good.
Biker Jim's a former repo man-turned-vendor of fine meats
in tube form.
There are definitely some thrills to be had stealing cars.
But I was ready for something else.
He's handed in his Slim Jim and his pepper spray
for a cream cheese gun.
You like something a little spicy?
I do like spicy.
Okay. Let's do the elk, jalapeño, cheddar.
Do you like cream cheese?
Listen, I'll have it the way you make it.
I think my wife summed it up
when she said cream cheese and jalapeños go together
like helpless women and railroad tracks,
just a very tasty combination, you know.
So, that's elk?
- Little cream cheese. - Cream cheese.
A little caramelized onion.
Oh, very good. Good structural integrity.
That's nice. What's next?
We're gonna go to the opposite,
cleanse your palate with a little wild boar.
Ah, yes.
It's diced with apricots and cranberries.
So where the elk has got, you know, a nice tooth to it,
the boar's fairly tender.
The elk's a bit spicy.
The boar's a little on the sweet side.
Mm. That's very tasty.
More.
More. This is Alaskan reindeer sausage.
I eat that thing for breakfast all the time.
And this is a classic thing up in Alaska?
Pretty much.
You can go to a lot of restaurants up there,
and you'll find reindeer and eggs, reindeer and pancakes.
Best thing I heard of coming out of Alaska in some time.
This is really hard
because I'm tasting a lot of sausage here,
but I want to finish 'em all.
I've got a rattlesnake-pheasant brat hiding in here
if you wanted to try a little rattlesnake today.
I've got... Yes.
Not often will you get just straight rattlesnake.
You know, it's not that rattlesnake isn't plentiful.
It's just... It's really hard to bone.
I can't stop.
That's excellent. Isn't that good?
I think this is gonna be it for me.
I think I... I hit the wall a couple of exits back.
I got to tell you.
The reindeer, the boar and the elk blow me away.
I don't have a ton of skills.
I say, "For a chef, I'm a really good car thief."
So bringing kind of a quality bratwurst to the street,
you know, really does feel good.
Reaching out here and looking around, it was...
Your name came up again and again and again.
Thank you for all your good work
in making Denver a wonderful place for me.
I'll be seeing you again.
Prague, capital of the Czech Republic.
A town known, I'm told, for its nightlife
is bound to have street vendors and street food
in the kind of greasy, gut-busting stuff
that drunks everywhere crave.
I'm on the hunt for sausages and fried things,
both specialties of these parts.
What people are telling me
is that traditional Czech cuisine...
Oh, it is suffering...
...was destroyed, was obliterated by the Soviets.
Oh, yeah.
There was almost nothing left.
It is suffering.
But... but that it seems to be coming back.
I think that, all over the world,
you want to have grandma's food again.
You know, you want to have this comfort stuff.
Denik Polreich is the chef
of one of the grander, better restaurants in town
and frankly seems a little horrified and disgusted
by my passion for sausage.
Some of these will be typical, you know.
This is the one.
Oh, that looks promising.
Yep.
Yeah. What's not to love?
Ooh, what's the...
Yeah, there we go.
Oh, yeah.
What should I be drinking with this? Beer or...
Beer, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
I'm all blissed out by this inviting wall of wieners,
and I guess for him,
it's like another chef coming to your town
and being interested only in string cheese and curly fries.
Yeah.
This is good, man.
- Yep? - Yeah.
It's all right.
I'm a happy man.
- Are you? - Yeah.
This used to be the really traditional thing, you know.
Uh-huh.
You are drinking whole night somewhere,
and they kicked you out of a restaurant.
There was the only place where you could eat something.
I think that's through the world 'round.
You know, when they kick you out of the regular restaurant,
there's always meat in a tube form.
Oh, yeah.
You got it good here, man.
Yeah?
We don't have this in New York.
- Don't you? - Nah.
I mean, you know, we have hot dogs, but...
Yeah.
You know, hot, nice sausages like this?
Let's see. They do...
Oh, yeah, look, fried cheese with mayonnaise.
- Yeah. - I got to do that, right?
You have to have it.
Fried cheese sandwich.
- Yeah? - Oh, yeah.
We're both freezing our asses off, by the way,
which also might help explain his befuddled expression.
How can I keep doing this as our fingers grow numb?
"Shouldn't we be in some warm, swank lounge,
drinking cocktails to a throbbing techno beat?"
Not me, my friend. Not me.
Sausages, all shapes and sizes, and all delicious.
But what of this? Fried cheese on a sandwich?
I need that right the [bleep] now.
Oh, yeah, baby.
Mmm. It's magnificent.
Mmm.
Oh, man. I wish I was drunker.
I mean, the more... The drunker you are,
the more you're gonna love this, and this is...
See, I know now I could live here.
Yeah?
Late at night, if this was here in my neighborhood,
I would be okay.
So, you're enjoying it?
I'm loving this. I mean, you look horrified.
You're standing there like, "Oh, man."
No! No. No. No, I'm not horrified.
No, it's... it's like
a, uh, I'm not really eating this often.
Sometimes, I'm... I feel so tempted, you know.
I feel like the guy would...
Should go and have one, you know.
You should, man. You should.
I should.
This is... this is a blessing.
This is a great thing to have in your town.
Fried cheese on a bun.
It may seem like a small thing to you.
To me, it's an answered prayer.
The fact that you've held on to this,
that this tradition is here, is a good sign.
You ate whole thing.
Did I eat that whole... Yeah, I did, didn't I?
I think I ate two whole sausages
and a mozzarella sandwich.
I disgust myself in a good way.
Jesus.
Meet Peter Engler, an expert
in the arcane history of Chicago street food,
an expert as well in the field of mouse genetics,
two areas which one would hope rarely intertwine.
What do you do for a living?
Genetics, mouse genetics.
What does that mean?
It's just studying, like, basic aspects of gene control,
gene silencing...
No anal-seeking mice, you know, super weapons?
No, not at all.
I can target at my television rivals
and people who piss me off, no?
Well, hey, you can't fault me for asking, right?
Peter's been searching out
and chronicling the highs and lows of obscure food,
both weird and sublime, for over 30 years.
In the course of this odyssey through Chicago foodways,
he's stumbled across the mother-in-law,
the evil stepbrother of the hot dog.
In short, it's a tamale on a hot dog bun covered with chili.
So, I guess what I want to know is,
how did you arrive at this subject?
♪ No reservations ♪
The evil stepbrother of the hot dog,
the mother-in-law.
So, I guess what I want to know is,
how did you arrive at this subject?
Liking the stuff is one thing.
Tracking it down to the source was another.
Would you say this is a hobby
or a consuming passion or an affliction?
I mean, what... No, probably all.
- All of the above? - Yeah.
So, your search for the elusive mother-in-law
brought you here?
This probably was my first mother-in-law.
- Really? - Yeah.
This is exactly what started me
on the whole Chicago food-history thing.
- Right here? - Yep.
At Fat Johnnie's, the tamale is employed
to maximum gut-busting effect,
either as the deadly tamale sundae
or the far more lethal mother-in-law
or the just plain suicidal mighty dog.
Can we get a mighty dog,
a mother-in-law and two suicides?
Do you want everything on 'em?
Everything, right? Yeah, the works.
Behold the mother-in-law,
disturbing in design yet strangely compelling.
Yeah. That... that's... That's a meal.
I went all out and got mine with the works.
Structurally, this poses some challenges.
Yeah.
According to the joke,
mother-in-laws aren't easy to handle.
And this one's no exception.
I'm... I'm liking this. This is really good stoner food.
Now, this monstrosity, on the other hand, the mighty dog.
You want to try some? It's, uh...
Good Lord.
Look at that thing.
Tamale and dog.
This? This is just wrong.
Mighty dog? You won't be feeling too mighty
in about an hour from now, my friend.
Oh, no.
Hot dog and tamale and chili and cheese together?
Holy jeebus.
I'll do it for my... For my network.
No. That's worlds collide, seeing your parents have sex,
your grandma break-dancing, De Niro and Pacino together.
It never works, and it just shouldn't.
The tamale and the hot dog, they don't belong together.
Yeah.
No. It's just a...
No. No. Wrong.
Oh, I'm gonna hate myself in the morning.
I hate myself already, but that was really good.
Yeah. It's, uh, that's the classic.
It's called a mother-in-law
because it's supposed to give you indigestion
the way only a mother-in-law can.
Now, that may be, but my mother-in-law
never held me hostage on the toilet for 20 minutes.
I wish I could say the same for this one.
How you doing, guys?
Hop in.
- Oh. - Whoa.
Yeah, a little... Little tight in here.
- Man. - Yup.
He was trying to get a bigger cab, and I told him, "No."
This is exactly what Nicaraguans cab look like."
Sometimes, we get, like, seven people inside of one.
Wow.
Meet Hector and Mario,
both born around the same year the peace process began.
So he's pretty well known for eating hamburgers.
- Really? - The cab driver, yeah.
He's really famous in Managua.
One can achieve fame by eating hamburgers?
Because he's always at the hamburger place.
Everybody that goes there knows him.
Ahh.
Our driver is Alvaro, street name "Shrek,"
for his legendary capacity for street food of dubious origins.
I'm gonna eat the hamburger.
All right.
- Un hamburguesa. - Dos hamburguesa.
And a hot dog. And a hot dog.
One of meat? One of dog?
Yeah.
Yeah, you know that's gonna be good.
This girl treats him better than his wife.
That's why he say that.
The hot dogs are familiar enough...
Pork hot dog, bacon, cheese, pico de gallo,
onions and ketchup.
We're provincial, Tony.
Okay, none of that leaking.
- Whoa. - Dude!
Oh, yeah. Excellent.
- Awesome. - Okay. Excellent.
But the look of the burger patties is troubling,
seeming to only nominally resemble meat.
Two mystery meat patties, bacon, cheese, lettuce,
tomato and onions, ketchup, mayo and mustard
on a jumbo sesame seed bun.
The most huge hamburger with cheese
and for the drunk people here in Nicaragua.
Man, that thing's [bleep] huge.
They're doing good work here. Professional.
Ah Look at this thing.
I'm losing it, man. I'm losing it.
That's delicious. Come on.
That's delicious.
Mmm. That's a good burger.
How many do you eat at a time? What's his record?
We normally get three.
That's all he can have, that credit.
Wow. That's a long ride home.
It was delicious, spicy, greasy.
He's saying that he wants to clarify
that it's not made from cow.
It's dawning on me this man is a homicidal maniac.
No, I got to say I think he does this woman a good justice.
I enjoyed that. Really?
Rocala Bacalao, one of the best-known bands in town.
Ska, funk, traditional, theme music from "The Simpsons,"
they can do everything.
They've been at it since they were kids.
Frontman Santiago Rosero's been with the band
since the beginning.
Interested in and very involved with the preservation
of traditional Ecuadorian culture,
particularly its food culture,
he's a good guy to have show you around.
A trained chef and expert on street eateries in Quito,
Santiago knows where to take me first... La Floresta,
a nighttime scene, a mobile food-court collection of carts
in the old town, specializing in the kind of cheap,
indigenous eats that always seems to make me happy.
I've had it stewed.
I've had it fried but never grilled.
♪ No reservations ♪
That looks good.
Nothing like smoky meat smell
and sizzling fat under bare lightbulbs.
And right away, it's fat slabs of roast pork with choclo,
the large-kerneled corn you see everywhere around here
with fava beans, roasted plantain, some boiled potato...
...and a tomato salad.
Nice, right?
Oh, man. That's a full meal.
And they give you a lot of extra.
I mean, they give you a lot to fill you up.
Yeah.
Mmm. Good pork.
Moist and juicy.
That's not all, my friends.
Chinchuline,
the uninviting-looking lower end of gut
that usually doesn't find itself
on my "favorite things to do" list.
The way most people cook it, it smells and tastes
disturbingly like a wet Scotch Terrier.
They clean out the... Just with water.
Yeah, and then they toss it in the oil
and the spices and throw it right on?
And right on, yeah.
But this?
This crispy, spicy version of chitlin
is the best I've ever had.
It's delicious.
I've had it stewed.
I've had it fried but never grilled.
It is chewy, of course, but it's also kind of crispy.
All right.
We need hot sauce on this, right?
Of course.
This... this kind of, uh, heat sauce is made with peanuts.
Aji chili with a peanut-based sauce
is also real common around here
and weirdly reminiscent of West African in flavor.
Oh, man. That's not even good.
That's... that's really tasty.
Ordinarily, I want that stewed a lot
in really, like, a really strong sauce.
Uh-huh.
But this is... No, no. This is good.
Yes. I love this.
Mmm.
And, of course, you got to try the guatita...
What is this, again?
It's the stomach of the cow.
...which is, I believe, stewed tripe
in a kind of soupy peanut curry sauce
served over rice with a big-ass hard-boiled egg
and, oh, yeah, some cabbage on top,
just in case you were still feeling a little peckish.
Again, you know, that's really good.
Creamy, herby, spicy, delicious.
These are a typical plate at the soccer stadium.
- Oh, yeah? - Yeah.
It might be a tough sell for most viewers,
but this tripe stew is damn good.
Now, this, anybody anywhere would like this
except maybe Gwyneth Paltrow
'cause she probably can't open her mouth wide enough.
These are empanadas de viento, wind's empanada.
All right. I'll have one of those.
Cheese empanadas, here more like a perfect storm
of greasy, crispy, savory, cheesy
in sweet, deep-fried envelope of dough
sprinkled with cinnamon sugar
just in case you don't hate yourself enough
after two or three of 'em.
Oh. There we go.
Kind of like a zeppole, but...
There's some other, like, this big.
But this is... Really?
No, this is, uh, quite a bit...
Well, that's big enough for me, man.
Yeah, good size.
One-size-fits-all empanada.
You're right. It's the cheese that makes it.
The fried cheese, fried dough and sugar together,
this is the ultimate food.
An American coming here would think, "Yeah, I don't know."
I don't like the look of that."
But wait a minute. Look.
All of these locals are eating here, but these people,
they're not in business by poisoning their neighbors.
You know what I mean? No, of course.
You could basically have a huge dinner...
Mm-hmm.
Starch, corn, vegetable, meat, all your basics
in an enormous amount
and a nice dessert for, like, $3.
Yep, no more than that.
I always try to... to bring my foreign friends here.
Once they try it,
they understand why other people come here.
Right. I can't believe, after all I've eaten,
I'm eating up this entire thing.
Fast, cheap and very, very tasty.
Belém, as sophisticated a modern city as any other.
So I find myself
on a busy thoroughfare-come-dining room
to get a nocturnal fix of tacacá, a common, everyday soup
that's a big local favorite.
Tacacá, please.
Doña Maria has been ladling out some of the best tacacá in town
for over 30 years.
Smells good.
The base of the soup is tucupi, the familiar cassava broth
to which you add a spoonful of thickening tapioca gum.
Cherry peppers add heat, and it's got shrimp in there,
but what really sets this soup apart is the addition
of the analgesic-containing jambu leaves.
Nice.
Just let me slurp something out of a hot, liquid-y bowl
on a little, plastic chair, pretty much happy.
So, is there a traditional way to eat this, I wonder?
Jambu first?
It's been described as seaweed-y but kind of, like,
nulling, numbing collared green kind of a thing.
In addition to its culinary value, jambu can be used
to numb toothaches and soothe stomach trouble.
Sort of a distant relative of our old friend, Mr. Cocaine.
Feel so '80s.
My lips are all tingly and numb.
I'm sure there's a lowhand joke here somewhere.
This lady knows what she's doing.
She's even thought
to provide individual trash cans to her patrons.
Really should have one of those in every facet of my life,
my own personal drool bucket.
I could go for, like, four more bowls of this,
but I'm trying to keep my girlish figure.
Unfortunate name, tacacá.
Around my house, you know, in... in Italian,
it means something very different.
Tacacá is seldom a good thing.
In this case, tacacá is really good.
As the host slowly dissolves into total moistness,
we say adieu.
What neighborhood is this? Where are we?
This is, uh, the biggest place
for street food by the airport.
This area is Mais Gate, yeah, the edge of Port-au-Prince.
Jean Handy Tibert is one of the most recognizable stars
of the fast, cheap and wildly popular
Haitian film industry's many productions.
These days, he does what he can,
including working with foreign crews like ours.
All kind of food.
Because there are so much people walking around here,
they come here for lunch and dinner.
Yeah, we going over there.
- Like what she's doing. - Yes.
On the edge of Port-au-Prince,
one of many roadside operations.
Everybody's got pretty much the same thing around here,
but Jean says this one's the best.
Lalu.
Lalu, which is local for callaloo,
a Caribbean green that I usually like.
- Crab? - Crab.
Well, the crab gives it flavor, mostly?
- Yes. - Yeah.
This stuff is cooked with greens, okra and peppers
and flavored with bits of crab and salt pork.
Rice and beans, this I love any way you want to make it.
And this? I'm all over it.
Then, you have the pork and chicken stew,
yeah, in Creole sauce.
Yeah, that looks good.
- You want it spicy, with pikliz? - Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Got to do the pikliz, right?
♪ No reservations ♪
Yeah, we going over there.
- Like what she's doing. - Yes.
On the edge of Port-au-Prince,
one of many roadside operations.
Everybody's got pretty much the same thing around here,
but Jean says this one's the best.
Lalu.
Lalu, which is local for callaloo,
a Caribbean green that I usually like.
Rice and beans, this I love any way you want to make it.
And this? I'm all over it.
You have the pork and chicken stew.
- Spicy, with pikliz? - Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah. Got to do the pikliz, right?
Oh, yeah. Pikli!
Cabbage, peppers. Kind of a spicy slaw, right?
Now, everybody's doing this.
Yeah.
It's because of the, like, cholera.
'Cause of the cholera?
On every table, a bottle of hand sanitizer,
cholera being a big and growing problem here.
Killed a lot of people in the north.
- And quick. - Quick.
24 hours. You get it, you can die.
Very severe.
Well, chicken's awesome.
And it's because of the Creole sauce.
What's in Creole sauce? Tomato, onion...
- Tomato... - Garlic...
...onion, garlic, Maggi.
Ask any chef here,
They gonna tell you about Maggi.
There it is.
It's the, uh, chicken bouillon.
So that's a fundamental ingredient.
Telling you, I'm loving the rice.
I'm loving the pikliz. I'm loving the chicken.
Lalu, nah, not so crazy about it.
Oh, you don't like the lalu?
Not loving it.
In Istanbul.
The Bosphorus is a busy place.
Oil tankers, ferry boats, naval vessels,
oh, and fishermen, lots of them...
...working the waters of the Black Sea,
the Mediterranean and the Bosphorus that connects them.
The mussels, I've heard, are especially good,
a sort of much-loved local favorite.
A bit notorious, actually, as they're rumored to be illegal.
Mussels filter heavy metals
out of industrial waterborne waste materials and solvents,
the kind you get from, well, oil tankers
and ferries and naval vessels.
And they tend to store them away until you eat them.
But a black market of impromptu itinerant mussel vendors
selling seafood of unknown provenance
with the very real likelihood of notes of mercury,
cadmium and lead in every mouthful,
well, who could resist their siren song?
I ask you.
Mm. Nothing I like better
than unlicensed seafood of indeterminate provenance.
Oh, yeah.
Thank you.
So let's see.
We got rice, spices... and unknown deliciousness.
It's a big mussel.
Did I mention they're room-temperature shellfish?
Mmm.
Yeah, maybe one more.
But then, of course, they're stuffed with rice and raisins
and pine nuts and onions,
maybe a little nutmeg and a squeeze of lemon.
And, yeah, they really do taste good.
I think they just keep coming until you stop them.
I mean, okay.
So... so it's marginally legal,
and we don't really know where it comes from and when.
But it tastes good, and he seems to commingle on good terms
with his neighbors.
You don't stay in business long by poisoning your neighbors.
Those are some delicious mussels.
Well, that was quite excellent,
and I think our work here is done.
Nighttime in Istanbul,
and I'm out hunting for doener kebab.
- Hi, guys. - Hello!
Hello. One of those, please.
It's good.
Oh, yeah. Come on.
Look at that, that throbbing missile of love.
I'll admit it right here, right now.
Those nasty things we call gyros in America,
that fluffy-looking mystery meatloaf
slowly spinning forlornly in front of an infrared light
in some fly-specked shop or festering in a street cart,
I love that [bleep]
I don't care what happens later.
So here, where they take their meat on a stick seriously,
where I know for sure they're using, like, real meat,
carefully laying stacks of lean lamb
interspersed with tasty, tasty lamb fat,
the two cooked slowly together
through a magnificently conglomerated heap
of what smells to me like love, baby.
That looks good.
Come to me, my love.
Surprisingly leakage-free.
I always thought, like, these things
would be squirting sauce out the sides and all messy.
A good sandwich should be like good sex... sloppy.
Very good, yeah?
Yeah, that's... That's good, man.
Very good. Very good.
That's your store?
All right, man. Thank you.
Competition.
Trying to horn in on my sandwich.
So it stands on its own.
Thank you, man. Trying to work here.
Thank you, brother.
I drink this every time I'm in Istanbul.
God bless vibrant capitalism.
Mmm.
Good to the last bite.
All right. Next order of business.
I got to try this burger thing.
My friends here have been pointing this out
and saying it's, like, their favorite thing ever.
I'm a fan of soggy burgers.
This takes soggy to whole new extremes.
All right, man.
Hamburger?
Yeah, I got to... I got to try one.
That looks really sinister.
Really, doesn't it look...
Kind of looks like a glazed doughnut
or Joe Francis after a week in prison.
Ooh. It's like a big, spicy slider.
While this bears only a marginal resemblance
to the beloved American standard, it's...
This is quite good.
Ooh. That's gonna go straight to my hips.