The One Street Food Dish You Should Try In Each Country

There's a time and a place to eat at Starbucks while traveling abroad: it's after day 49 when you're hungry and lost and they won't give you the WiFi password unless you buy something.

The occasional blueberry scone at Starbucks during a moment of weakness aside — travelin' meals are best served street-side, squatting on a plastic chair among locals beneath the cool night air, sipping from a dusty bottle of local lager as a grizzled Australian expat tells you the story of how he lost his left hand to a shark while sea kayaking.

If you want to dive face first into a country's culture, there's no tastier way than gobbling down their street food. Eating food from local vendors let's you pull up your sleeves and dig into food the local population eats. You're supporting hard-working vendors while feasting in the company of local people (and the odd Australian expat). As an added bonus, street food is cheaper than anything dished out at a tourist trap — and probably cleaner than anything they're serving at off-peak hours.

But there are only so many pages in your passport (hint: they're refillable, though) and space in your tummy, so we rounded up a list of the one street food dish you should try in these legendary countries.

Now follow us over to Peru, where another humble seafood street food dish has risen to the ranks of its country's national dish. Ceviche — sometimes spelled seviche or cebiche, depending on the country you're in — is available in various renditions in countries across Latin America.

The version you'll find in Peru is often made from chunks of fresh, raw white fish marinated in lime, cilantro, and other spices, topped with fresh red onion, and served with large-kernel corn and sweet potato. It's a centuries-old cooking method that allows the acidic citrus fruit juice to transform the fish protein into something similar to cooked seafood, making the raw seafood safe to consume.

You can find ceviche in restaurants across Peru. But for times when you haven't the money or time to sit down at a restaurant, there's ceviche al paso. This ceviche is sold roadside by vendors in colorful carts. They pile styrofoam plates high with ceviche fish, and scoop on sides of soft and crunchy choclo. Note: sine you're dabbling in raw seafood here, we recommend saving ceviche al paso for when you're dining coastal cities like Lima, it's sleek, modern capital. 

Rounding back toward Asia we arrive at one of the world's street food culinary meccas: Thailand. It was tough to choose a top street food from a country that just shells out skewer after skewer of mind-blowing street food, but eventually we settled on som tam.

Som tam translates to "sour" and the crushing tool used to make it. Most non-Thai speaking folk know it as papaya salad, but don't let that "salad" word fool you. With som tam, there's nary a wilted shred of iceberg or drop of blue cheese dressing on the plate. Instead, the dish is crafted from thin shreds of crunchy green papaya, mixed with long, crunchy green beans, shredded carrots, and tomatoes. Som tam is bathed in a complex mix of lime, fish sauce, sweet palm sugar, Thai chilies, and fresh garlic, then topped with dried shrimp and crumbled peanuts.

The resulting dish is at once sweet, spicy, and sour. For those of you who aren't spicy food fans, beware: even "mild" dishes tamed down for timider tongues can be quite spicy. For those of you who do seek spice thrills, ask for pet mak (very spicy) and buckle up.

Bright, busy, and unabashed about spice, the vast country of India is treasure trove of spicy vegetarian street food. One of our favorites, pani puri — also known as puchka, pani patashe, and gol gappe — can be found in various forms across the sprawling country. The street snack consists of a round, crisp hollow ball made with refined flour, filled with a gooey mixture of chickpeas, potatoes, tamarind water, and potatoes.

For the full experience, hunt down a pani puri cart and pull up a red plastic stool. The vendor will hand-serve you the crispy ball and instruct you to punch a thumb through the top. The crunchy little ball is then filled with chickpeas and potatoes, then dunked into tamarind water.

The trick to eating pani puri is to gobble it down fast, lest it turn mushy and spill all over your shorts. Unless you have a particularly strong stomach, it's also important to double check to see the vendor is using mineral, not tap water.  

Like so many of America's favorite foods, the Sonoran dog originated in a foreign country and was brought to the states by immigrants. Born in the street carts of Sonora, Mexico, the bacon-wrapped hot dog traveled 70 miles north to Tucson, Arizona, some time around the late '80s or early '90s.

Today, around 200 dogueros hawk Sonoran dogs from street carts around Tucson. Dogged former dogueros graduated from food carts to world-renowned restaurants like El Guero Canelo and BK Carne Asada and Hot Dogs.

Uniting Mexican and American flavors, Sonoran hot dogs are wrapped in juicy bacon and stuffed into a fluffy bolillo roll. They're topped with a mouthwatering mélange of condiments and garnishes — typically chopped fresh tomatoes, grilled onions, pickled jalapenos, mayonnaise, crema, and beans. For the even hungrier, there's crispy radishes and cucumbers, whole chiles, guacamole, and crushed Ruffles to pile on, too.

To end on a predictable note: tacos hold the undisputed title for the best street food in Mexico for good reason. You could spend a lifetime eating nothing but street tacos in Mexico, and you would never go hungry or get bored. In Mexican cities, tacos are sold on seemingly every corner and topped with every kind of meat, veggie, salsa, and garnish imaginable. Some of our favorites include:

• Guisado-style tacos. Popular around breakfast and lunch time, Guisado tacos are served with an endless variety of stewed meats and veggies. Vendors will set out earthenware bowls called cazuelas with choices of fillings, ranging from meaty picadillo hash to roasted poblano chiles in cream. .

• Tacos el pastor. You can recognize al pastor vendors by their gyro-like spits, which sizzle up seasoned pork crowned with slices of pineapples. Vendors serve the pineapple-caramelized pork with white onions, cilantro, and salsa.

• Tacos de canasta. "Basket tacos" or tacos de canasta are tacos that served steamed from cloth-covered baskets. The moist tacos are stuffed with goodies like shredded chicken, spicy mutton, potato and eggs, or chicharrones.

• Tacos de cabeza. Named for the Spanish word for head, tacos de cabeza are prepared with juicy, slow-steamed meat scooped from inside a steer's noggin. Taco vendors often offer an assortment of head innards, including sesos (brains), lengua (tongue), and oreja (ear).